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SPEECHES 


POLITICAL    QUESTIONS 


BY 


GEORGE  W.  JULIAN. 


WITH   ArJ   IOTBODT7CTION 


L.  MARIA   CHILD. 


NEW    YORK: 

PUBLISHED   BY   HURD   AND   HOUGHTON. 

QTambribge:   Eit)*rsi&.e  flhess. 

1872. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1871,  by 

George  W.  Julian, 
in  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


riverside:   Cambridge: 
printed  by  h.  o.  houghton  and  company 


To  the  people  I  have  so  long  served  in  Congress,  and 
especially  to  the  many  devoted  friends  who  have  sustained 
me  with  such  singular  steadfastness  in  the  political  con- 
flicts of  the  past,  I  respectfully  dedicate  this  volume.  It 
is  compiled  and  published  chiefly  for  them,  and  in  memory 
of  common  struggles  and  sacrifices  for  principles  long 
overwhelmingly  trampled  down,  but  now  finally  in  the 
ascendant.  To  the  general  public  these  speeches  will 
possess  only  such  interest  as  pertains  to  by-gone  dis- 
cussions of  great  public  questions,  and  to  views,  vehe- 
mently combated  when  uttered,  which  have  been  tried  by 
the  verdict  of  time.  With  a  single  exception  they  are 
printed  in  the  order  of  their  delivery ;  and  I  only  add, 
that  while  in  a  few  instances  opinions  are  advanced  which 
have  since  been  modified,  my  constant  and  inspiring  aim 
was  to  declare  what  I  believed  to  be  the  truth. 

GEORGE  W.  JULIAN. 

Centreville,  Indiana,  October,  1S71- 


INTRODUCTION. 

BY   L.   MARIA   CHILD. 


No  one  who  has  observed  the  course  of  our  public 
men,  and  who  sincerely  believes  in  the  great  principles  of 
justice  and  freedom  on  which  the  government  of  the 
United  States  is  founded,  can  fail  to  honor  the  character 
and  appreciate  the  labors  of  the  Hon.  George  W.  Julian, 
whose  name  has  for  several  years  past  been  familiar  to 
the  public  as  a  prominent  Member  of  Congress  from 
Indiana. 

Like  many  of  our  distinguished  citizens,  he  is  what  ( is 
called  "  a  self-made  man ; "  a  class  that  would  be  better 
designated  as  Mor-made  men.  His  paternal  ancestors 
emigrated  from  France  to  the  eastern  shore  of  Maryland 
the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century.  His  father 
was  one  of  the  pioneer  settlers  of  Indiana,  and  became  a 
member  of  the  Legislature  of  that  State.  He  established 
himself  near  Centreville,  the  shire  town  of  Wayne  County, 
where  George  was  born  May  5,  1817.  When  he  was 
six  years  old,  the  father  died ;  leaving  a  widow  with  six 
children  and  straitened  means  for  their  support.  She  was 
a  faithful  mother  to  the  little  orphans,  but  they  were 
obliged  to  struggle  with  many  difficulties.  Under  this 
early  rigorous  training  of  circumstances,  George  grew 
mentally  and  physically  vigorous.  From  boyhood  he  was 
distinguished  by  uncommon  diligence  and  perseverance, 
both  in  work  and  study.  The  common  country  schools 
of  that  period,  and  the  occasional  loan  of  a  good  book 
from  some  friendly  neighbor,  constituted  the  whole  of  the 


vi  INTRODUCTION. 

educational  advantages  within  his  reach  ;  but  he  availed 
himself  of  them  to  the  utmost.  After  working  all  day  in 
the  fields  he  was  accustomed  to  split  a  quantity  of  kin- 
dlings, and,  in  lieu  of  oil  or  candles,  pursue  his  studies  till 
late  into  the  night  by  the  light  they  afforded.  It  was 
fortunate  for  himself  and  for  his  country,  that  he  was  not 
born  to  drift  down  the  stream  of  life  in  a  pleasure-barge, 
gazing  listlessly  at  the  stars  above  him,  or  at  the  flowers 
on  the  banks ;  that  he  was,  on  the  contrary,  from  child- 
hood upward,  obliged  to  row  his  own  boat,  against  the 
current,  and  often  among  snags  and  rapids.  The  arduous 
task  imparted  muscular  strength  to  mind  and  body,  and 
formed  him  to  habits  of  self-reliance  and  close  observa- 
tion. The  well-known  Quaker,  Elias  Hicks,  used  to  say, 
"  It  takes  live  fish  to  swim  up  stream ; "  and  George  W. 
Julian,  by  his  success  in  that  operation,  has  proved  him- 
self very  much  alive. 

At  eighteen  years  old  he  began  to  teach  school,  and  dis- 
charged creditably  the  duties  of  that  vocation.  Even  at 
that  early  age,  he  manifested  the  tendency,  which  has 
since  characterized  him,  to  take  a  firm  stand  against 
abuses.  The  big  boys  of  his  school  combined  with 
some  men  at  work  on  the  Cumberland  Road  to  compel 
him  to  "  treat "  on  Christmas  Day,  according  to  a  custom 
prevailing  in  that  region ;  but  being  aware  that  the  holi- 
day was  thus  often  made  an  occasion  of  riot,  and  some- 
times of  violence,  he  manfully  resisted  all  their  importu- 
nities and  threatening^. 

He  continued  to  teach  school  for  nearly  three  years, 
and  toward  the  close  of  that  period  began  to  study  law. 
He  was  admitted  to  the  Bar  in  1840,  and  has  practiced 
law  ever  since,  in  his  native  place,  with  the  interruptions 
incident  to  an  active  political  career.  In  1845,  he  was 
elected  to  the  Legislature  of  Indiana,  where  he  distin- 
guished himself  by  his  earnest  opposition  to  the  barbarism 
of  Capital  Punishment,  and  by  his  exertions  to  prevent 


INTRODUCTION.  vn 

the  repudiation  of  the  State  Debt.  Although  he  belonged 
to  a  Whig  family,  and  was  elected  by  Whig  votes,  he 
never  hesitated  to  act  independently  of  his  party  when- 
ever their  views  conflicted  with  his  own  principles.  From 
the  commencement  of  his  public  career,  it  was  evident 
that  his  character  furnished  none  of  the  materials  neces- 
sary for  a  political  tool.  The  lines  of  Schiller  might  be 
justly  applied  to  him,  — 

'"  This  man  was  never  made 
To  ply  and  mould  himself,  like  wax,  to  others  : 
It  goes  against  his  heart ;  he  cannot  do't." 

About  this  period  the  writings  of  Dr.  Channing  awak- 
ened in  his  mind  a  lively  interest  on  the  subject  of  Slav- 
ery. It  was  a  question  that  greatly  plagued  the  politi- 
cians of  that  period,  and  both  parties  would  gladly  have 
dodged  it  if  they  could.  Finding  that  impossible,  they 
exerted  their  ingenuity  to  devise  perpetual  compro- 
mises between  the  antagonistic  principles  of  freedom  and 
oppression.  Such  service  was  alien  to  Mr.  Julian's  na- 
ture. He  saw  clearly  that  the  system  of  slavery  was  evil 
throughout,  in  its  character  and  its  consequences  ;  and  no 
motives  of  expediency  could  tempt  him  to  suppress  his 
convictions.  It  was  a  severe  trial  to  him  when  the  Whigs 
nominated  General  Taylor  for  the  Presidency.  He  wanted 
to  act  with  his  old  political  friends  and  allies ;  but  his  con- 
science was  disquieted  at  the  idea  of  helping  to  make  the 
owner  of  many  slaves  the  ruler  of  the  Kepublic.  For 
a  while,  he  remained  neutral.  But  Anti-slavery  was  then 
assuming  a  political  form  under  the  name  of  the  Free 
Soil  Party,  whose  object  mainly  was  to  prevent  the  ex- 
tension of  Slavery  over  any  new  Territories.  He  lent  a 
thoughtful  ear  to  the  arguments  they  advanced,  and  when 
they  invited  him  to  become  a  delegate  to  their  great  Con- 
vention at  Buffalo,  in  1848,  he  accepted  the  nomination. 
The  proceedings  of  that  convention  were  in  harmony 
with  his  state  of  mind,  and  he  returned  from  it  full  of 


vin  INTRODUCTION. 

enthusiasm  for  the  new  Party  of  Freedom.  He  canvassed 
for  it  with  unexampled  zeal  and  energy  ;  going  from  place 
to  place,  and  often  making  three  speeches  a  day.  Nothing 
kindles  intellect  into  such  a  glowing  flame  as  a  living  coal 
from  the  altar  of  Truth.  Those  who  had  previously  recog- 
nized Mr.  Julian  as  a  man  of  very  promising  ability  were 
surprised  at  the  masterful  energy  and  eloquence  which  he 
now  exhibited.  But  the  more  efficiently  he  advocated 
unpopular  truths,  the  more  he  was  hated  and  maligned. 
Only  those  Avho  were  themselves  abolitionists,  at  that 
stormy  period,  can  imagine  how  much  he  had  to  encoun- 
ter from  the  alienation  of  friends  and  relatives,  the  mis- 
representations of  political  opponents,  and  the  displeasure 
of  former  political  associates.  He  was  accused  of  being 
a  general  disorganizer  of  society  ;  of  trying  to  promote 
bloody  insurrections  at  the  South ;  of  intending  to 
cheapen  the  labor  of  white  men  by  flooding  the  North 
with  fugitive  slaves ;  and  of  the  crowning  iniquity  of 
promoting  marriages  between  blacks  and  whites.  But 
though  he  was  persecuted  as  such  a  dangerous  disturber 
of  the  public  peace,  editors  indulged  in  facetious  gibes 
and  jeers  concerning  the  smallness  of  the  audiences  he 
addressed ;  representing  them  as  consisting  mostly  of 
"  negroes  and  women."  Mr.  Julian  considered  large  prin- 
ciples more  important  than  large  audiences ;  and  he  went 
on  proclaiming  Anti-slavery  truths  to  whomsoever  would 
listen,  spicing  his  discourse  with  pungent  sarcasms  on  all 
those  who  proved  recreant  to  the  cause  of  freedom.  The 
armor  of  his  pro-slavery  adversaries  was  full  of  holes, 
through  which  his  keen  eye  and  skillful  hand  could  easily 
pierce  them  to  the  marrow  of  their  bones  with  the  sharp 
arrows  of  truth.  The  worst  of  all  was  that  thev  knew  he 
was  in  the  right ;  and  his  ability  to  prove  it  made  him 
the  most  thoroughly  hated  man  by  all  the  time-servers 
of  that  region. 

The  result  of  this  fierce  struggle  between  truth  and 


INTRODUCTION.  ix 

falsehood,  freedom  and  slavery,  was  highly  creditable  to 
the  good  sense  and  correct  principles  of  the  people  in 
Mr.  Julian's  District.  They  signified  their  high  apprecia- 
tion of  his  character  by  electing  him  to  Congress  in  1849. 
A  large  portion  of  the  Democratic  Party,  willing  to  de- 
feat the  Whig  ticket  by  any  process,  threw  their  votes  for 
him.  This  led  to  charges  of  "  bargain  and  corruption." 
But  Mr.  Julian,  who  never  prowled  in  dark  corners,  but 
always  walked  abroad  in  open  daylight,  had  repeatedly 
and  publicly  declared  that  he  wanted  the  vote  of  no  man 
who  did  not  stand  fairly  and  squarely  on  the  platform  of 
his  own  avowed  principles ;  and  the  slander,  though  oft 
repeated,  was  not  believed.  His  election  was  fairly  earned 
and  richly  deserved.  Probably  there  was  no  individual 
who  labored  more  efficiently  than  he  did  to  extend  the 
principles  of  the  Free  Soil  Party,  —  principles  which 
made  California  a  Free  State,  rescued  Oregon  from  the 
curse  of  Slavery,  and  culminated  in  the  overwhelming 
strength  and  final  ascendency  of  the  Republican  Party. 

As  a  Member  of  Congress  Mr.  Julian  manifested  the 
same  uprightness  and  downrightness  of  character,  which 
had  previously  distinguished  him.  There  was  then  before 
the  House  a  Bill  called  the  Wilmot  Proviso,  intended  to 
prevent  the  extension  of  Slavery  into  the  new  Territories 
acquired  by  the  war  with  Mexico.  The  Slave  Power  and 
its  servile  tools  at  the  North,  sought  to  checkmate  the 
increasing  influence  of  Free  Soil  principles,  by  inaugu- 
rating an  idea  which  they  styled  "  the  doctrine  of  pop- 
ular sovereignty ; "  the  plain  meaning  of  which  was  that 
the  people  who  settled  a  Territory  had  a  right  to  decide 
whether  they  would  introduce  Slavery  or  not,  and  that 
Congress  had  no  right  to  legislate  on  the  subject.  Their 
plan  was  to  crowd  the  poor,  ignorant  whites  of  the  South 
into  the  Territories,  and  by  their  agency  secure  the  intro- 
duction of  Slavery  ;  a  plan  which  not  long  after  began  to 
be  worked  out  in  the  murderous  onslaughts  of  Missouri 


x  INTRODUCTION. 

ruffians  upon  the  Northern  settlers  of  Kansas.  The  polit- 
ical tools  of  the  South  were  very  ready  to  adopt  this 
compromise  of  free  principles  disguised  under  the  attrac- 
tive name  of  "  Popular  Sovereignty."  But  Mr.  Julian  was 
alive  to  the  falseness  of  its  pretensions  and  the  danger  of 
its  consequences,  and  he  resisted  it  with  all  the  strength 
of  his  earnest  nature.  In  the  same  spirit,  he  fought 
against  the  Fugitive  Slave  Bill,  which  converted  the 
North  into  a  slave-hunting  ground  for  the  South.  And 
he  also  labored  strenuously  to  restrict,  as  much  as  possi- 
ble, the  boundaries  of  Texas,  which,  by  much  political 
manoeuvring,  and  in  palpable  violation  of  the  Constitu- 
tion of  the  United  States,  had  managed  to  gain  admission 
into  the  Union  as  a  new  Slave  State.  He  also,  at  this 
early  day,  zealously  advocated  the  Homestead  Policy. 

The  bold,  uncompromising  ground  which  he  took 
against  the  Slave  Power,  at  every  turn,  enraged  those 
whose  self-interest  was  involved  in  the  corrupt  and  artful 
game,  while  it  also  alarmed  the  timid  ;  for  much  that  now 
appears  wise  and  just,  when  reviewed  in  the  light  of  his- 
tory, then  seemed  like  a  dangerous  extreme  of  radicalism. 
He  was  again  nominated  for  Congress,  in  1851 ;  but  his 
political  opponents  rallied  against  him  in  such  force  that 
they  defeated  his  election. 

He  was  not  a  man  to  suppress  truth,  or  to  consent  merely 
to  whisper  it,  for  the  sake  of  the  honors  and  emoluments 
of  office.  He  still  continued  to  hurl  his  sharp  and  well- 
aimed  spears  at  the  powerful  and  malignant  Demon  of 
Slavery.  In  1852,  he  made  a  speech  at  Cincinnati  on  the 
"  Strength  and  Weakness  of  the  Slave  Power,"  in  which 
he  arraigned  both  Whigs  and  Democrats  as  traitors  to 
freedom,  and  boldly  rebuked  the  time-serving  course  of 
the  American  churches  and  their  clergy.  It  was  in  this 
year  that  he  was  nominated  by  his  party  for  the  Vice- 
Presidency,  on  the  ticket  with  John  P.  Hale.  In  1853,  he 
delivered  a  speech  at  Indianapolis  on  "  The  Signs  of  the 


INTRODUCTION.  XI 

Times  —  The  State  of  Political  Parties."  It  was  a  dark 
hour  for  the  Anti-slavery  Cause ;  but  he  saw  gleams  of 
light  around  the  horizon  of  the  clouded  sky,  and  ut- 
tered hopeful  prophecies,  which  subsequent  events  have 
confirmed.  This  speech  was  extensively  circulated  in  the 
form  of  a  tract,  and  did  much  to  sustain  the  courage  and 
strengthen  the  hands  of  the  friends  of  freedom.  He 
seized  every  opportunity  to  serve  the  good  cause,  whether 
by  public  addresses,  or  wayside  conversation.  In  vain 
was  he  denounced,  persecuted,  and  threatened  with  mob 
violence ;  nothing  could  drive  him  from  the  rugged  path 
in  which  he  had  chosen  to  walk,  because  its  end  was  free- 
dom. In  vain  was  he  reminded  that  he  was  ruining  his 
prospects  in  life ;  nothing  could  tempt  him  into  the 
crooked  ways  of  policy.  He  saw  the  truth  as  only  honest 
souls  can  see  it,  and  he  defended  it  as  only  brave  souls 
will.  When  the  mysterious  Know  Nothing  Party  sud- 
denly burst  upon  the  public,  like  an  army  raised  by  the 
touch  of  a  magician's  wand,  he  at  once  perceived  that 
the  movement  was  contrary  to  the  genius  of  our  govern- 
ment and  subversive  of  its  principles  ;  and  he  did  battle 
with  it  accordingly.  His  Speech  at  Indianapolis,  in  1855, 
was  published  by  Dr.  Bailey  in  the  "  National  Era,"  and 
"  Facts  for  the  People,"  and  was  generally  considered 
the  most  thorough  argumentation  of.  the  question.  The 
stand  he  took  on  this  subject  displeased  many  of  his  old 
friends  and  supporters,  and  greatly  increased  the  pop- 
ular hostility  he  had  incurred  by  joining  the  Anti-slavery 
movement.  A  comparatively  small  band  of  freedom,  how- 
ever, adhered  to  him,  and  it  pretty  soon  became  evident 
that  he  was  destined  to  outlive  his  unpopularity.  When 
the  fluctuations  of  political  parties  began,  in  1856,  to  tend 
toward  a  new  form  under  the  name  of  the  National  Ee- 
publican  Party,  he  was  chosen  a  Vice-President  of  its 
first  Convention  at  Pittsburg,  and  Chairman  of  the  Com- 
mittee of  Organization. 


xii  INTRODUCTION. 

But,  while  politicians  considered  him  an  impracticable 
man,  as  they  invariably  do  consider  every  man  who  will 
not  bend  his  principles  to  party  policy,  his  honest,  straight- 
forward, daring  course  commended  him  to  the  respect 
and  confidence  of  the  people  ;  and  in  the  face  of  very 
formidable  opposition,  he  was  elected  to  Congress  in  1860 
by  an  overwhelming  vote  ;•  and  reelected  during  four  suc- 
cessive terms.  Those  ten  years  in  Congress  bear  record 
of  Herculean  labor,  and  unremitting  watchfulness  over 
the  true  interests  of  the  country.  He  was  prominent  and 
active  in  all  the  salutary  measures  connected  with  the 
War  of  the  Rebellion.  Though  he  had  great  respect  for 
President  Lincoln,  and  approved  of  his  administration  in 
the  main,  he  failed  not  to  rebuke  that  unnecessary  timid- 
ity and  delay  on  the  part  of  the  government,  which  so 
greatly  increased  the  expenditure  of  lives  and  treasure. 
Many  considered  it  impolitic  to  find  any  fault,  lest  polit- 
ical opponents  should  make  use  of  it  to  their  own  advan- 
tage ;  but  he  conceived  that  the  people,  in  making  him 
their  public  servant,  had  placed  him  on  the  watch-tower, 
and  that  it  was  his  duty  to  perform  the  part  of  a  faithful 
sentinel.  He  urged  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves  long 
before  it  took  place,  and,  in  fact,  from  the  beginning  of 
the  struggle  ;  he  argued  in  favor  of  arming  the  negroes 
of  the  South,  as  an  act  of  justice  as  well  as  of  military 
necessity  ;  he  maintained  that  it  was  a  duty  to  confiscate 
the  lands  of  rebels,  as  a  measure  of  war,  and  also  to  fur- 
nish homesteads  for  the  soldiers  and  sailors  of  the  United 
States ;  he  earnestly  demanded  the  punishment  of  rebel 
leaders ;  he  labored  for  the  safe  reconstruction  of  Rebel 
States;  he  zealously  advocated  all  the  amendments  to  the 
Constitution  for  securing  universal  freedom  and  equality 
of  civil  rights ;  and  he  was  the  first  of  our  public  men  to 
demand  suffrage  for  the  emancipated  slaves. 

But  while  the  pro-slavery  army,  at  every  change  of 
base,  and  in  all  manner  of  disguises,  found  him  always 


INTRODUCTION.  xiii 

wide  awake,  with  lance  in  rest,  ready  to  meet  their  onset, 
and  proclaim  their  deceptions,  he  was  very  far  from  confin- 
ing his  attention  to  that  range  of  subjects.  He  was  indeed 
"  a  man  of  one  idea ; "  but  only  in  the  sense  that  his  one 
idea  was  to  stand  by  all  right  principles,  whether  his  ad- 
vocacy of  them  seemed  likely,  or  not,  to  advance  his  own 
interests,  or  those  of  his  party.  He  was  the  first  and  fore- 
most in  advocating  the  Homestead  Policy,  which  grants 
homes  to  poor  settlers  on  the  public  domain.  And  sub- 
sequently, when  the  rights  and  privileges  of  the  Home- 
stead Bill  were  endangered  by  the  schemes  of  land-specu- 
lators, he  originated  his  well-known  Bill  forbidding  the 
further  sale  of  agricultural  lands,  except  in  small  allot- 
ments, and  to  actual  settlers.  He  vindicated  this  policy 
in  very  able  and  convincing  speeches,  and  the  House 
voted,  nearly  two  to  one,  in  favor  of  the  proposed  meas- 
ure near  the  close  of  the  Forty-first  Congress.  He  also 
lifted  up  his  voice  against  mammoth  grants  of  land  to 
railroad  companies ;  thereby  enabling  them  to  keep  large 
tracts  unsettled  while  they  wait  to  enrich  themselves  by 
advance  of  prices.  It  is  not  easy  to  exaggerate  the  im- 
portance of  guarding  this  country  against  land  monop- 
oly, which  has  kept  the  masses  in  Europe  hopelessly 
poor.  It  is  both  kind  and  politic  to  facilitate  to  the  ut- 
most the  settlement  and  cultivation  of  the  broad  acres  of 
our  public  domain  ;  for  labor  constitutes  the  true  wealth 
of  a  nation,  and  one  industrious  settler  is  more  honorable 
and  useful  to  the  country,  than  a  dozen  adventurers  who 
have  made  themselves  millionaires  by  monopoly.  The 
increase  of  small  farms  and  comfortable  homesteads  im- 
proves the  character  of  a  people,  and  is  far  more  con- 
ducive to  national  prosperity  than  ingots  of  silver  and 
nuggets  of  gold,  the  seeking  and  finding  of  which  in- 
evitably produces  deterioration  of  character  ;  and  every 
process  to  grow  rich  suddenly,  without  labor,  has  the  same 
results.      Mr.  Julian  deserves  our  gratitude  as  a  public 


xiv  INTRODUCTION. 

benefactor  for  his  unwearied  exertions  to  warn  the  peo- 
ple against  land  monopoly,  to  check  wastefulness  in  the 
disposal  of  the  public  domain,  and  to  secure  the  distribu- 
tion of  it  into  small  farms. 

The  United  States,  in  the  year  1850,  granted  to  the 
States  the  swamp  and  overflowed  lands  within  their  bor- 
ders, and  the  vigilant  eyes  of  Mr.  Julian  discovered  that 
great  frauds  on  the  rights  of  the  people  were  being  per- 
petrated under  cover  of  those  grants.  He  accordingly 
introduced  a  Bill  defining  Swamp  and  Overflowed  Lands, 
the  passage  of  which  would  save  millions  of  acres  for 
honest  settlers.  This  Bill  likewise  received  a  large  ma- 
jority of  votes  in  the  House  in  the  Forty-first  Congress. 

The  rich  Mineral  Lands  of  the  United  States  also  re- 
ceived a  share  of  his  attention.  He  objected  to  their 
being  reserved  from  sale,  and  deprecated  the  system  of 
leasing  them,  or  the  policy  of  abandoning  them  to  set- 
tlers without  law,  as  unwise  in  an  economical  point  of 
view,  and  productive  of  deleterious  moral  effects ;  and 
the  reform  which  he  ably  urged  on  this  subject  has 
already  been  partially  carried  out. 

The  interests  of  Labor  and  the  Resumption  of  Specie 
Payments  have  also  been  earnestly  pleaded  for  by  him. 
On  all  these  subjects,  and  various  others,  he  has  in- 
troduced important  measures,  and  sustained  them  with 
speeches  more  or  less  elaborate.  These  are  all  marked 
by  strong  good  sense,  forcible  and  well-arranged  argu- 
ments, habitual  independence  of  thought,  a  high  standard 
of  moral  rectitude,  and  not  unfrequently  by  eloquence  of 
style.  Some  of  them  have  been  justly  ranked  among  the 
best  utterances  in  the  Congress  of  the  United  States. 

Among  his  other  good  services,  it  would  be  ungrateful 
in  me  to  omit  that  he  has  introduced  and  advocated  a 
proposition  to  grant  the  Right  of  Suffrage  to  Women  in 
the  District  of  Columbia,  and  in  the  Territories  of  the 
United  States ;  and  that  he  has  been  outspoken  in  favor 


INTRODUCTION.  xv 

of  a  Sixteenth  Amendment  to  the  Constitution,  first  pro- 
posed by  himself  in  the  Fortieth  Congress,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  securing  to  women  all  the  civil  rights  enjoyed  by 
other  citizens. 

In  addition  to  the  great  labor  involved  in  the  careful 
preparation  of  so  many  speeches,  Mr.  Julian  was  ten  years 
a  member  of  the  House  Committee  on  Public  Lands,  and 
eight  years  the  Chairman  of  it.  During  four  years  he 
was  a  member  of  the  important  Joint  Committee  of  both 
Houses  on  the  Conduct  of  the  War.  For  two  years  he 
was  a  member  of  the  House  Committee  on  Reconstruc- 
tion ;  and  he  was  also  one  of  the  Committee  that  pre- 
pared articles  of  impeachment  against  President  Johnson. 

This  brief  outline  may  serve  to  give  an  idea  of  his 
unremitting  industry,  and  of  the  enlightened  patriotism 
which  kept  such  vigilant  watch  over  the  interests  of  the 
country,  in  all  directions.  Next  to  his  powerful  aid  in 
the  extermination  of  Slavery,  I  think  we  owe  him  most 
for  his  exertions,  in  various  forms,  to  establish  and  pro- 
mote the  Homestead  Policy,  and  to  keep  the  Public 
Lands  ,out  of  the  clutches  of  speculators  and  monopolists. 
But  his  efforts  in  that  direction  of  course  raised  wp  a  host 
of  enemies  among  the  legions  who  seek  to  acquire  wealth 
at  the  expense  of  the  United  States.  In  1870,  the  forces 
against  him  were  marshaled  with  so  much  skill,  that  he 
again  lost  liis  election ;  a  result  to  be  deeply  regretted  at 
this  period,  when  political  corruption  spreads  so  widely, 
and  honesty  is  comparatively  rare. 

In  private  life,  Mr.  Julian  has  the  universal  reputation 
of  being  most  exemplary.  He  has  been  twice  married, 
and  in  both  cases  is  said  to  have  had  the  good  fortune  to 
become  united  with  a  sensible,  conscientious,  and  energetic 
woman.  In  1845  he  married  Miss  Anne  E.  Finch,  of  In- 
diana, who  died  in  the  year  1860  ;  and  in  1863  he  mar- 
ried Miss  Laura  Giddings,  of  Ohio.  She  is  the  daughter 
of  the  able  and  heroic  Joshua  R.  Giddings,  to  whom  the 


xvi  INTRODUCTION. 

country  owes  an  everlasting  debt  of  gratitude  for  his 
powerful  and  persistent  battling  with  the  Slave  Power  in 
Congress  through  many  a  stormy  year.  The  State  of 
Ohio  would  have  done  herself  honor  if  she  had  kept  that 
brave  veteran  in  Congress  as  long  as  he  had  a  voice  to 
speak  or  vote.  Mrs.  Julian,  being  "Brutus'  wife  and  Cato's 
daughter/'  may  well  be  stronger  than  her  sex,  "  being  so 
fathered  and  so  husbanded."  John  Stuart  Mill  acquired 
faith  in  woman's  capacity  for  public  affairs  by  the  intelli- 
gent sympathy  and  cooperation  of  his  remarkable  wife 
in  the  advancement  of  all  the  great  principles  that  inter- 
ested his  own  mind.  Perhaps  Mr.  Julian  may  be  under 
similar  obligations  to  his  fortunate  experience  in  matri- 
mony. On  most  of  the  great  questions  of  the  day  he 
has  been  in  advance  of  public  opinion ;  and  his  annuncia- 
tion of  principles  for  which  he  contended  against  power- 
ful odds,  seems  like  the  voice  of  prophecy  when  read  in 
connection  with  the  ultimate  triumph  of  those  principles. 
It  will  be  the  same  with  the  great  principle  of  the  perfect 
equality  of  the  sexes,  which  he  espoused  many  years  ago, 
and  now  advocates  so  earnestly  with  a  minority. 

Mr.  Julian  is  eminently  Western  in  his  character  :  frank 
and  fearless,  prompt  and  decided ;  loyal  in  his  attach- 
ments, but  ready  to  thrust  at  friends  or  foes,  if  they  place 
themselves  in  a  position  to  impede  the  progress  of  Truth 
and  Freedom.  He  seems  to  have  chosen  for  his  motto  : 
"  First  be  sure  you  are  right,  then  go  ahead."  And  he 
has  gone  ahead,  like  a  steam-engine,  and  drawn  many 
cars  full  after  him. 

It  has  been  said  of  John  Bright  of  England  that  during 
thirty  or  forty  years  of  public  life,  he  has  never  swerved 
from  the  straight  line  on  which  he  started  ;  that  his  prin- 
ciples have  known  no  change,  except  the  greater  devel- 
opment and  perfection  which  result  from  experience ; 
and  that  events  were  continually  proving  his  foresight 
and  corroborating   his  opinions.     I   know  of  no  public 


INTRODUCTION.  xvii 

man  in  this  country,  except  the  Hon.  Charles  Sumner,  to 
whom  this  remark  can  be  so  justly  applied  as  to  the  Hon. 
George  W.  Julian.  His  speeches  furnish  proof  of  this. 
They  reflect  credit  on  our  National  Legislature,  and  form 
a  valuable  record  of  an  important  transition  state  in  the 
history  of  the  Republic. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

THE    SLAVERY    QUESTION 1 

House  of  Representatives,  May  14,  1850,  in  Committee  of  the  Whole  on 
the  State  of  the  Union. 

"THE   HEALING    MEASURES" 34 

In  Committee  of  the  Whole  on  the  Army  Appropriation  Bill,  September 
25,  1850. 

THE   HOMESTEAD    BILL 50 

House  of  Representatives,  January  29,  1851. 

THE    STRENGTH  AND  WEAKNESS  OF  THE  SLAVE  POWER  — 

THE  DUTY   OF  ANTI-SLAVERY  MEN 67 

Delivered  in  Cincinnati,  April  27,  1852. 

THE  STATE   OF  POLITICAL  PARTIES  —  THE   SIGNS  OF  THE 

TIMES ' 83 

Delivered  at  the  Free  Soil  State  Convention,  Indianapolis,  May  25,  1853. 

THE  SLAVERY  QUESTION  LN  ITS  PRESENT  RELATIONS  TO 
AMERICAN  POLITICS 102 

Delivered  at  Indianapolis,  June  29,  1855. 

INDIANA  POLITICS 126 

Delivered  at  Raysville,  July  4,  1857. 

THE  CAUSE  AND  CURE  OF  OUR  NATIONAL  TROUBLES   .   154 

In  Committee  of  the  Whole  on  the  State  of  the  Union,  January  14, 1862. 

CONFISCATION  AND  LIBERATION 181 

House  of  Representatives,  May  23,  1862. 

THE    REBELLION  —  THE    MISTAKES    OF    THE    PAST  —  THE 

DUTY   OF   THE   PRESENT 192 

House  of  Representatives,  February  18,  1863. 

HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  THE  LANDS  OF  REBELS         212 
House  of  Representatives,  March  18,  1864. 

RADICALISM  AND    CONSERVATISM  —  THE    TRUTH   OF    HIS- 
TORY  VINDICATED 229 

In  Committee  of  the  Whole  on  the  State  of  the  Union,  February  7,1865. 


xx  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

SALE   OF  MLNEEAL  LANDS 225 

House  of  Representatives,  February  9,  1865. 

DAN  GEES  AND  DUTIES  OF  THE  HOUE  — EECONSTRUCTION 

AND    SUFFEAGE 262 

In  the  Hall  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  Indianapolis,  November  17, 
1865. 

SUFFEAGE  IN  THE  DISTRICT   OF   COLUMBIA      .        .        .        .        291 
House  of  Eepresentatives,  January  16,  1866. 

AMENDMENT   OF  THE   CONSTITUTION    ......        309 

House  of  Eepresentatives,  January  29,  1866. 

THE  PUNISHMENT   OF  REBEL  LEADEES 319 

House  of  Eepresentatives,  April  30,  1866. 

EADICALISM  THE   NATION'S   HOPE 332 

House  of  Representatives,  June  16,  1866. 

REGENERATION   BEFORE  RECONSTRUCTION        ....        348 
House  of  Representatives,  January  28,  1867. 

IMPEACHMENT   OF  PRESIDENT  JOHNSON  ...        361 

House  of  Eepresentatives,  December  11,  1867. 

SPOLIATION  OF  THE  PUBLIC  DOMAIN— THE    SAVING  REM- 
EDY             -..        365 

House  of  Representatives,  March  6,  1868. 

IMPOLICY  OF  LAND  BOUNTIES -THE  HOMESTEAD  LAW  DE- 
FENDED      385 

In  Committee  of  the  Whole  on  the  State  of  the  Union,  July  13,  1868. 

THE   SEYMOUR  DEMOCRACY  AND   THE  PUBLIC   LANDS        .        399 

Delivered  at  Shelbyville,  August  8,  1868. 

HOW  TO  RESUME   SPECIE  PAYMENTS 415 

In  Committee  of  the  Whole  on  the  State  of  the  Union,  February  5,  1869. 

THE   OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION 432 

House  of  Eepresentatives,  January  21,  1871. 

THE  RAILWAY  POWER 456 

House  of  Representatives,  February  21,  1871. 

REVIEW   OF  CONGRESSIONAL  POLITICS 463 

Closing  Remarks  at  Dublin,  October  25,  1868. 


SPEECHES. 


THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION. 

HOUSE   OF  REPRESENTATIVES,  MAY   14,  1850,   IN  COMMITTEE   OF  THE 
WHOLE   OX   THE   STATE   OF  THE  UNION. 

[This  speech,  like  the  one  which  follows  it,  will  vividly  recall  the  anti-slavery  crisis 
of  1850,  and  the  shameful  surrender  of  Congress  to  the  slave  power  through  the 
famous  compromise  measures  of  that  year.  These  measures  paved  the  way  for  the 
repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  the  bloody  raid  into  Kansas,  the  Dred  Scott  decis- 
ion, and  the  final  chapter  of  civil  war  ;  and  in  the  light  of  these  results  the  facts  and 
arguments  here  so  carefully  arrayed  possess  a  certain  historical  interest,  while  com- 
pletely vindicating  the  action  of  the  little  party  of  Independents  in  the  Thirty-first 
Congress  in  standing  aloof  from  the  Whig  and  Democratic  organizations,  and  warn- 
ing the  country  against  further  submission  to  their  rule.] 

Mr.  Chairman,  —  Representing,  as  I  do,  one  of  the  strongest 
anti-slavery  districts  in  the  Union,  I  feel  called  upon  to  expi'ess,  as 
nearly  as  may  be,  the  views  and  feelings  of  my  constituents,  in 
reference  to  the  exciting  and  painfully  interesting  question  of 
slavery.  I  am  not  vain  enough  to  suppose  that  anything  I  may  say 
will  influence  the  action  of  this  committee  ;  yet  I  should  hereafter 
reproach  myself  were  I  to  sit  here  day  after  clay,  and  week  after 
week,  till  the  close  of  the  session,  listening  to  the  monstrous 
heresies,  and  I  am  tempted  to  say  the  impudent  bluster,  of  South- 
ern gentlemen,  without  confronting  them  on  this  floor  with  a 
becoming  protest  in  the  name  of  the  people  I  have  the  honor  to 
represent.  Sir,  what  is  the  language  writh  which  these  gentlemen 
have  greeted  our  ears  for  some  months  past  ?  The  gentleman 
from  North  Carolina  [Mr.  Clingman]  tells  us,  that  less  pauperism 
and  crime  abound  in  the  South  than  in  the  North,  and  that  there 
never  has  existed  a  higher  state  of  civilization  than  is  now  exhib- 
ited by  the  slaveholding  States  of  this  Union  ;  and  so  in  love  is  he 
with  his  "peculiar  institution,"  which  thus  promotes  the  growth 
of  civilization  by  turning  three  millions  of  human  beings  into  sav- 
ages, and   prevents   them  from  becoming  paupers   by 'converting 


2  THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION. 

them  into  brutes,  that  he  gives  out  the  threat,  doubtless  in  behalf 
of  his  Southern  friends,  that  unless  they  are  permitted,  under 
national  sanction,  to  extend  their  accursed  system  over  the  virgin 
soil  of  our  Territories,  they  will  block  the  wheels  of  government, 
revolutionize  the  forms  of  legislation,  and  involve  this  nation  in  the 
horrors  of  civil  war.  Nay,  he  goes  farther,  and  anticipating  the 
triumph  of  Northern  arms,  and  comparing  the  vanquished  "  chiv- 
alry "  to  the  Spartans  at  Thermopylae,  he  kindly  furnishes  the 
future  historian  with  the  epitaph  which  is  to  tell  posterity  the  sad 
story  of  slaveholding  valor:  "  Sere  lived  and  died  as  noble  a  race 
as  the  sun  ever  shone  wpon"  —  fighting  (he  should  have  added)  for 
the  extension  and  perpetuation  of  human  bondage  ! 

The  gentleman  from  Mississippi  [Mr.  Brown]  manifests  an  equal 
devotion  to  the  controlling  interest  of  the  South.  He  declares 
that  he  regards  slavery  "  as  a  great  moral,  social,  political,  and 
religious  blessing,  —  a  blessing  to  the  slave  and  a  blessing  to  the 
master."  The  celebrated  John  Wesley  was  so  "fanatical"  as  to 
declare  that  "  slavery  is  the  sum  of  all  villainies."  Had  he  lived 
in  this  enlightened  age  and  Christian  land,  he  would  have  learned 
that,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  the  sum  of  all  blessings.  He  would 
have  been  told  that  even  the  Bible  sanctions  it  as  a  Divine  institu- 
tion. Southern  gentlemen  remind  us  that  it  "  existed  in  the  tents 
of  the  Patriarchs,  and  in  the  households  of  Plis  own  chosen  peo- 
ple ;  "  that  "  it  was  established  by  decree  of  Almighty  God,"  and 
"  is  sanctioned  in  the  Bible  —  in  both  Testaments  —  from  Genesis 
to  Revelation  ;  "*  and  so  sacredly  is  it  to  be  cherished,  that  we  in 
the  North  are  not  allowed  to  give  utterance  to  our  deepest  moral 
convictions  respecting  it.  My  friend  from  Mississippi  graciously 
admits  that  we  think  slavery  an  evil ;  but  he  adds,  "  Very  well, 
think  so ;  but  keej)  your  thoughts  to  yourselves"  Thus,  in  the 
imperative  mood  and  characteristic  style  of  a  slave-driver  are  we  to 
be  silenced.  In  this  "  freest  nation  on  earth,"  our  thoughts  must 
be  suppressed  by  this  slaveholding  inquisition.  We  must.  I  sup- 
pose, make  a  bonfire  of  the  writings  of  Whittier,  and  expurgate 
our  best  literature.  Indeed,  to  be  consistent,  and  in  order  to 
eradicate  every  trace  of  "  fanaticism  "  from  the  minds  of  the  peo- 
ple, Ave  must  blot  out  the  history  of  the  American  Revolution, 
and  "  keep  our  liberty  a  secret,"  lest  we  should  give  offense  to  the 
immaculate  institution  of  the  South.  Of  other  institutions  of 
society  we  may  speak  with  the  utmost  freedom.  We  may  talk  of 
Northern  labor  and  Northern  pauperism.     We  may  advocate  with 

1  Jefferson  Davis. 


THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION.  3 

tongue  and  pen  the  most  radical  schemes  of  reform,  and  thus  assail 
every  existing  feature  of  our  civilization.  We  may  discourse  freely 
of  things  even  the  most  sacred,  as  the  Supreme  Being,  his  attri- 
butes, and  Providence  —  yes,  in  this  boasted  land  of  free  speech,  we 
may  deny  his  existence,  or  blaspheme  his  name  by  invoking  his 
sanction  of  the  most  heaven-daring  crimes  ;  but  American  slavery 
is  an  institution  so  precious,  so  beneficent,  so  exalted  among  the 
ordinances  of  God,  so  "  sanctioned  and  sanctified  by  the  legislation 
of  two  hundred  years,"  that  Northern  men  are  not  permitted  to 
breathe  an  honest  whisper  against  it.  We  must  hold  our  tongues 
and  seal  our  lips  before  the  majesty  of  this  Southern  Moloch,  lest 
he  should  lose  some  of  the  victims  which  otherwise  his  worshippers 
might  sacrifice  upon  his  blood-stained  altar.  O,  the  devouring 
loveliness,  the  enrapturing  beauties,  the  unspeakable  beatitudes  of 
the  "  patriarchal  institution  !  "  And  what  a  blessed  thing  it  must 
be  to  live  in  the  pure  atmosphere  and  under  the  clear  sky  of  the 
South,  feasting  upon  philosophy  and  reason,  far  removed  from  the 
folly  and  "  fanaticism  "  of  the  North  ! 

And  the  gentleman  from  Mississippi,  like  his  friend  from  North 
Carolina,  is  in  favor  of  extending  the  blessings  of  slavery  at  all 
hazards.  The  South  ivill  not  submit  to  be  girdled  round  by  free 
soil ;  and  if  we  dare  to  thwart  her  purpose,  we  are  reminded  of 
the  struggle  of  our  fathers  against  British  tyranny.  Southern 
gentlemen  point  us  to  the  battle-fields  of  our  Revolution,  and  bid 
us  beware.  A  Northern  man,  especially  if  disposed  to  be  "  fanat- 
ical," would  suppose  that  our  Southern  brethren  would  avoid  such 
allusions.  Our  fathers,  it  is  true,  resisted  the  aggressions  of  the 
mother  country  "at  all  hazards,  and  to  the  last  extremity;  "  but 
their  resistance  was  not  in  behalf  of  slavery,  but  freedom.  Mr. 
Madison  declared,  in  1783,  that  "  it  was  the  boast  and  pride  of 
America  that  the  rights  for  which  she  contended  were  the  rights 
of  human  nature."  And  Mr.  Jefferson  said,  that  "  one  hour  "  of 
this  American  slavery,  which  has  been  so  recently  transfigured 
into  all  blessedness,  "  is  fraught  with  more  misery  than  ages  of 
that  which  we  rose  in  T'ebellion  to  oppose."  In  speaking  of  an 
apprehended  struggle  of  the  blacks  to  rid  themselves  of  their  bond- 
age, he  affirmed  that  "  the  Almighty  has  no  attribute  whicji  can 
take  sides  with  us  in  such  a  contest."  Yet  Southern  gentlemen 
appeal  to  our  revolutionary  history  as  a  warning  to  us,  and  a  jus- 
tification of  a  war  on  their  part,  not  for  the  establishment,  but  for 
the  subversion  of  liberty,  and  the  destruction  of  "  the  rights  of 
human  nature,"  by  the  indefinite  extension  over  free  lands  of  that 


4  THE    SLAVERY   QUESTION. 

system  of  bondage  which  the  very  soul  of  Jefferson  abhorred. 
All  this,  to  Northern  men,  seems  strange.  As  a  specimen  of  South- 
ern philosophy  it  may  be  very  creditable  to  politicians  from  that 
quarter,  and  it  may  appeal  powerfully  to  their  patriotism,  but  we 
cannot  comprehend  it.  Nothing  short  of  the  serene  understand- 
ing and  unclouded  vision  of  a  slaveholder  can  fathom  such  argu- 
ments in  defense  of  the  South. 

The  gentleman  from  Virginia  [Mr.  Morton]  makes  war  upon 
the  ballot-box.  He  says  it  has  become  "  sectional ;  "  and  a  distin- 
guished gentleman  in  the  other  end  of  the  Capitol,  after  charging 
it  with  being  the  parent  of  the  anti-slavery  agitation  and  its  appre- 
hended disasters  to  the  country,  pronounces  it  "  worse  than  Pan- 
dora's box."  We  in  the  North  have  been  taught  that  a  constitu- 
tional majority  should  rule.  We  believe  this  principle  lies  at  the 
foundation  of  our  free  system  of  government.  We  have  been  so 
"  fanatical  "  as  to  regard  the  ballot-box  as  the  palladium  of  our 
liberty.  But  our  slaveholding  brethren  have  discovered  that  this 
supposed  safeguard  of  freedom  is,  in  fact,  an  engine  of  mischief. 
It  is  the  dreaded  instrument  by  which  this  Union  is  to  be  broken 
into  fragments.  How  we  should  get  alone:  in  a  Democratic  gov- 
ernment  without  it,  I  am  not  able  to  explain  ;  and  I  regret  that 
Southern  gentlemen,  whose  minds  are  free  from  anv  "  fanatical  " 
influence,  have  not  seen  fit  to  enlighten  us  on  that  subject. 

The  gentleman  from  Georgia  [Mr.  Wellborx]  assails  the 
dogma  that  "  men  are  created  equal  ;  "  he  styles  it  "  a  mystical 
postulate,"  although  our  fathers  regarded  it  as  a  self-evident  truth. 
They,  I  suppose,  lived  in  the  twilight  of  political  wisdom  ;  for, 
since  I  have  had  the  honor  to  occupy  a  seat  on  this  floor,  I  have 
on  more  occasions  than  one  heard  Southern  gentlemen  denounce 
Jefferson  as  a  sophist,  and  the  Declaration  of  Independence  as  a 
humbug.  And  some  of  these  gentlemen,  strange  to  tell,  coolly 
style  themselves  Democrats  I  Why,  we  are  told  that  so  far  from 
being  created  equal,  men  are  not  created  at  all.  Adam  alone  was 
a  created  man.  Neither  are  men  born.  Infants  are  born,  and 
grow  up  to  the  estate  of  manhood  ;  but  men  are  neither  born  nor 
created.  The  equality  of  men  is  declared  to  be  absurd  for  other 
reasons.  Some  men,  we  are  told,  are  taller  than  others,  some  of 
a  fairer  complexion,  some  more  richly  endowed  with  intellect  ;  as 
if  the  author  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  had  meant  to 
affirm  that  men  are  equal  in  respect  to  their  physical  or  intellectual 
peculiarities ! 

Mr.   Chairman,  I    will    speak    seriously.     I    need    not  further 


THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION.  5 

multiply  these  examples  of  Southern  opinion  and  feeling.  I  have 
brought  them  forward  because,  while  the  cry  of  "Northern  fanati- 
cism "  is  incessantly  ringing  in  our  ears,  I  desire  the  country  to 
judge  whether  a  much  larger  share  of  fanaticism  does  not  exist  in 
the  Southern  States ;  and  whether  this  slaveholding  fanaticism  is 
not  infinitely  less  excusable  than  that  which  prevails  in  the  North. 
Sir,  I  can  respect  the  man  who,  under  the  impulse  of  philanthropy 
or  patriotism,  deals  his  ill-judged  blows  at  an  institution  which  is 
crushing  the  dearest  rights  of  millions,  and  now  seeks  at  all  hazards 
to  curse  new  regions  with  its  presence ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  respect 
the  slaveholder,  who,  with  his  foot  upon  the  neck  of  his  brother, 
sits  down  with  his  Bible  in  one  hand  and  his  metaphysics  in  the 
other,  to  argue  with  me,  that  the  truths  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  are  mere  sophisms,  and  that  the  forcible  stripping  of 
three  millions  of  human  beings  of  all  their  rights,  even  their 
humanity  itself,  receives  the  sanction  of  the  Almighty,  and  is  a 
blessing  to  both  tyrant  and  slave.  This  is  a  species  of  fanaticism 
above  all  others  the  most  distasteful,  the  most  preposterous,  the 
most  revolting.  I  Avill  not  undertake  to  combat  these  absurdities 
of  its  champions  ;  for  it  has  been  said  truly,  that  to  argue  with 
men  who  have  renounced  the  use  and  authority  of  reason,  and 
whose  philosophy  consists  in  holding  humanity  in  contempt,  is  like 
administering  medicine  to  the  dead,  or  endeavoring  to  convert  an 
atheist  by  Scripture. 

Mr.  Chairman,  we  hear  much  of  Northern  and  Southern 
aggression.  Nothing  is  more  current  in  Southern  speeches  and 
newspapers  than  the  charge,  that  the  people  of  the  free  States  are 
aggressiyig  upon  the  rights  of  the  South  ;  and  this  Union,  it  seems, 
is  to  be  dissolved,  unless  these  aggressions  shall  cease.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  people  of  the  free  States  charge  the  South  with 
being  the  aggressor,  and  plead  not  guilty  to  the  indictment  of  the 
slaveholders.  Now,  how  stands  the  case  ?  Who  is  the  aggressor  ? 
This  is  the  question  to  be  solved,  and  the  one  I  propose  mainly  to 
examine.  I  wish  to  do  this  fairly  and  dispassionately ;  for  I  am 
fully  aware  of  the  differences  of  opinion  which  prevail  in  regard 
to  it,  resulting,  perhaps  necessarily,  from  the  different  circumstances 
of  the  parties. 

The  charge  of  Northern  aggression  I  certainly  deny.  It  has  no 
just  foundation.  Neither  is  the  charge  of  Southern  aggression, 
perhaps,  fully  and  strictly  true.  The  truth  rather  seems  to  be, 
that  under  the  lead  of  Southern  counsels,  both  sections  of  the 
Union  have  united  in  enlarging  and  aggrandizing  the  slave  power. 
This  proposition  I  shall  endeavor  to  establish. 


6  THE-  SLAVERY   QUESTION. 

What  are  these  Northern  ao-o-ressions  of  which  we  have  heard 
so  much  complaint  ?  Of  what  hostile  acts  do  they  consist  ?  Have 
the  people  of  the  free  States  attempted  to  interfere,  by  law,  with 
slavery  in  the  South?  This  charge,  I  am  aware,  is  frequently 
brought  against  us.  You  can  scarcely  open  a  newspaper  from  that 
quarter  in  which  it  is  not  gravely  made.  It  has  been  again  and 
again  denied  by  Northern  men  on  this  floor,  but  Southern  gentle- 
men still  continue  to  repeat  it.  Sometimes  it  is  preferred  against 
the  people  of  the  North  generally,  but  more  frequently  against  a 
comparatively  small  portion  of  them,  as  the  Free  Soil  party.  The 
charge  is  utterly  unfounded  in  truth.  The  Whigs  and  Democrats 
of  the  North,  as  well  as  the  Free  Soil  men,  disclaim  all  right  on 
the  part  of  Congress  to  touch  the  institution  of  slavery  where  it 
exists.  We  all  agree  that  the  subject  is  beyond  our  control.  As 
regards  the  naked  question  of  constitutional  power,  Congress  has 
no  more  right  to  abolish  slavery  in  South  Carolina,  than  it  has  to 
abolish  free  schools  in  Massachusetts,  —  no  more  right  to  support 
slavery  in  one  State  than  in  the  other.  It  is  an  institution  de- 
pendent wholly  upon  State  law,  with  which  the  General  Gov- 
ernment lias  no  more  concern  than  with  slavery  in  Russia  or 
Austria.  It  is  true,  that  some  of  us  in  the  North  claim  the  right 
to  assault  slavery  with  moral  weapons,  even  in  the  States.  When 
the  slaveholder  says  to  us  that  on  this  subject  we  must  keep  our 
thoughts  to  ourselves,  we  shall  obey  him  if  it  suits  us.  We  have 
a  right  to  employ  those  moral  forces  by  which  reforms  of  every 
kind  are  carried  forward.  We  understand  the  power  of  opinion. 
We  believe,  in  the  language  of  Dr.  Channing,  that  "  opinion  is 
stronger  than  kings,  mobs,  lynch-laws,  or  any  other  laws  for  the 
suppression  of  thought  and  speech  ;  "  and  that,  "  whoever  spreads 
through  his  circle,  be  that  circle  wide  or  narrow,  just  opinions  and 
views  respecting  slavery,  hastens  its  fall."  Sir,  it  is  not  only  our 
right,  but  our  duty,  to  give  utterance  to  our  cherished  moral  con- 
victions ;  and  if  slavery,  rooted  as  it  is  in  the  institutions  and 
opinions  of  the  South,  cannot  brave  the  growing  disapprobation  of 
Christendom,  let  it  perish.  And  it  will  perish.  If  by  "  reenact- 
ing  the  law  of  God,"  we  can  prevent  its  extension,  the  South  will 
be  constrained  to  adopt  some  plan  of  gradual  emancipation.  She 
will  realize  forcibly  the  important  fact,  which  she  now  endeavors 
to  overlook,  that  truth,  justice,  humanity,  and  the  spirit  of  the  age, 
are  all  leagued  against  her  system.  I  will  not  harbor  the  impious 
thought  that  an  institution,  so  freighted  with  wretchedness  and  woe, 
is  to  be  perpetuated  under  the  providence  of  God.    I  cannot  adopt 


THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION.  7 

a  principle  that  would  dethrone  the  Almighty,  and  make  Satan 
the  governor  of  the  moral  world.  It  is  "  the  fool  "  who  "  hath 
said  in  his  heart  there  is  no  God."  Nor  do  we  mean  to  be  silenced 
by  the  hackneyed  argument  that  slavery  is  a  civil  institution,  and 
therefore  none  of  our  business.  We  deny  that  the  public  laws  of 
a  community  can  sanctify  oppression,  or  stifle  the  expression  of  our 
sympathy  for  the  oppressed.  Your  slavery,  when  intrenched  be- 
hind your  institutions,  is  still  slavery  ;  and  although  your  laws 
may  uphold  it,  they  cannot  repeal  that  Christian  law  which  teaches 
the  universal  brotherhood  of  our  race.  But  while  I  thus  frankly 
avow  these  sentiments,  I  repeat  what  I  have  already  said,  that  the 
people  of  the  North  claim  no  right,  through  the  action  of  the  Gen- 
eral Government,  to  interfere  with  slavery  in  the  slaveholding 
States.  We  most  emphatically  disavow  any  such  purpose.  Are 
we,  then,  guilty  of  aggression  upon  the  rights  of  the  slaveholder? 
We  are  charged  with  violating  the  clause  in  the  Federal  Consti- 
tution relative  to  fugitives  from  labor.  This  is  among  the  gravest 
accusations  preferred  against  us.  Sir,  this  clause,  and  the  act  of 
Congress  made  in  pursuance  of  it,  have  been  elaborately  argued 
and  solemnly  adjudicated  in  the  highest  court  in  the  nation.  Our 
duty  in  the  free  States  has  been  made  so  plain  that  a  child  may 
understand  it.  I  would  not  refer  to  this  subject,  which  has  been 
so  often  discussed  on  this  floor,  and  repeat  what  has  been  so  often 
said,  were  it  not  for  the  unending  clamor  of  the  South  against  us. 
We  are  driven  to  a  repetition  of  the  grounds  of  our  defense.  We 
say  the  slave-hunter  may  come  upon  our  soil  in  pursuit  of  his 
fugitive,  and  take  him  if  he  is  able,  either  with  or  without  warrant, 
and  we  are  not  allowed  to  interfere  in  the  race.  "  Hands  off"  is 
our  covenant,  and  the  whole  of  it.  If  the  owner  sees  fit  to  sue 
out  a  warrant,  he  must  go  before  a  United  States  officer  with  his 
complaint.  It  is  not  the  duty  of  our  State  magistrates  to  aid  him, 
the  execution  of  the  clause  in  question  depending  exclusively  upon 
federal  authority.  I  think  I  state  fairly  the  opinion  of  the  Su- 
preme Court  in  the  case  of  Prigg  vs.  the  State  of  Pennsylvania. 
Now,  if  Congress  alone  can  provide  for  the  execution  of  this  clause 
through  federal  jurisdiction,  and  the  State  magistrates  of  the 
North  are  under  no  obligations  to  interfere,  is  it  a  violation  of  the 
constitutional  rights  of  the  South  for  us  to  pass  laws  prohibiting 
such  interference  ?  I  would  like  to  have  Southern  gentlemen 
answer  this  question  ;  for  I  insist  upon  it,  that  if  the  Federal  Con- 
stitution does  not  require  us  to  assist  in  the  recapture  of  fugitives, 
it  cannot  be  an  aggression  upon  Southern  rights  to  withhold   such 


8  THE    SLAVERY   QUESTION. 

assistance,  and  thus  maintain  the  position  of  neutrality,  or  non- 
action, assigned  us  by  the  Constitution.  Can  it  be  that  the  North- 
ern States  have  any  other  duties  to  perform  than  those  which  the 
Constitution  itself  imposes  ?  Is  slavery  so  endeared  to  us  that  we 
must  volunteer-  in  its  support  ?  Sir,  in  examining  this  question, 
the  constitutional  rights  of  the  South,  and  the  corresponding  con- 
stitutional obligations  of  the  North,  are  the  only  legitimate  matters 
of  consideration.  No  free  State  has  as  yet  passed  any  laws  dis- 
charging fugitives  from  the  service  they  owe  by  the  laws  of  other 
States,  or  preventing  their  recapture  ;  and  if  this  is  not  done,  there 
can  be  no  reasonable  ground  of  complaint  against  the  North. 
According  to  the  decision  alluded  to,  the  fugitive  may  be  recap- 
tured without  warrant,  and,  without  any  trial  of  his  rights  by  jury 
or  otherwise,  carried  into  slavery.  This  manifestly  exposes  the 
colored  people  of  the  free  States  to  the  Southern  kidnapper.  They 
have  the  right,  which  belongs  to  all  communities,  to  guard  the 
liberties  of  their  own  citizens  ;  and  if,  for  this  purpose,  some  of 
them  have  passed  laws  against  the  kidnapping  of  free  persons  as 
slaves,  and  providing  a  trial  by  jury  to  determine  the  question 
whether  the  party  claimed  is  or  is  not  a  slave,  is  it  an  aggression 
upon  Southern  rights?  When  the  free  colored  citizens  of  the 
North  visit  the  ports  of  South  Carolina,  they  are  thrown  into 
prison,  and  sometimes  even  sold  into  slavery.  This,  if  I  mistake 
not,  is  justified  by  the  South  on  the  ground  of  a  necessary  police 
regulation.  Have  not  the  Northern  States  a  right  to  establish  their 
police  regulations,  to  secure  the  rights  of  their  citizens  ?  Are  not 
police  regulations  in  behalf  of  liberty  as  justifiable  as  police  regu- 
lations in  behalf  of  slavery  ? 

As  regards  the  enticement  of  slaves  from  their  masters,  the 
number  of  such  cases  is  small.  Neither  the  States,  nor  the  mass 
of  their  citizens,  are  accountable,  or  have  any  connection  whatever 
with  such  transactions.  The  great  majority  of  escapes  are  prompted 
by  other  causes  than  Northern  interference.  The  slave  has  the 
power  of  locomotion,  and  the  instinct  to  be  free  ;  and  it  would 
indeed  be  wonderful  did  he  not,  of  his  own  will  and  by  his  own 
efforts,  smuggle  for  the  prize  of  which  he  has  been  robbed.  That 
men  will  strive  to  better  their  condition  is  a  law  of  nature.  The 
flight  of  the  bondman  is  a  necessary  consequence  of  the  oppression 
under  which  he  groans.  Blame  not  the  North  for  this,  but  blame 
your  diabolical  system,  which  impiously  tramples  under  foot  the 
God-given  rights  of  men.  Upbraid  Nature,  for  she  is  always 
"  agitating  "  the  question  of  slavery,  and  persuading  its  victims  to 


THE    SLAVERY    QUESTION.  9 

flee.  You  hold  three  millions  of  your  fellow-beings  as  chattels. 
You  shut  out  from  them  the  light  of  the  Bible,  and  degrade  and 
brutalize  them  to  the  extent  of  your  power,  for  your  system  re- 
quires it.  You  trample  under  foot  their  marriage  contracts,  and 
spread  licentiousness  over  half  the  States  of  the  Union.  You 
den}r  them  that  principle  of  eternal  justice,  a  fair  day's  wages  for. 
a  fair  day's  work.  You  sunder  their  dearest  relations,  separating 
at  your  will  husbands  and  wives,  parents  and  children.  And  do 
you  suppose  the  poor  slave,  smarting  under  these  wrongs,  will  not 
seek  deliverance  by  flight?  And  when,  through  peril  and  starva- 
tion, he  finds  his  way  among  us,  panting  for  that  liberty  for  which 
our  fathers  poured  out  their  blood,  do  you  imagine  we  shall  drop 
our  work  and  join  in  the  chase  with  his  Christless  pursuers  ?  Sir, 
there  is  no  power  on  earth  that  can  induce  us  thus  to  take  sides 
with  the  oppressor.  Such,  I  rejoice  to  believe,  is  the  public  senti- 
ment of  the  North,  that  I  care  not  what  laws  Congress  may  enact, 
the  slave-hunter  will  find  himself  unaided.  The  free  States  will 
observe  faithfully  the  compromises  of  the  Constitution.  They  will 
give  up  their  soil  as  a  hunting-ground  for  the  slaveholder,  suspend- 
ing their  sovereignty  that  he  may  give  free  chase  to  his  fugitive. 
They  will  pass  no  law  to  discharge  him  from  the  service  he  may 
legally  owe  to  his  claimant,  or  to  hinder  his  recapture.  But  we 
will  not  actively  cooperate  against  the  unhappy  victim  of  your 
tyranny.  And  if  Southern  gentlemen  mean  to  insist  upon  such 
active  cooperation  on  our  part,  as  a  condition  of  their  continuing 
in  the  Union,  they  may  as  well,  in  my  judgment,  begin  to  look 
about  them  for  some  way  of  getting  out  of  it  on  the  best  terms 
they  can.  Under  no  circumstances,  I  trust,  will  we  yield  to  their 
demand. 

Another  intolerable  aggression  with  which  the  North  is  charged 
is  that  of  scattering  incendiary  publications  in  the  South,  designed 
to  incite  insurrections  among  the  slaves.  The  Southern  gentleman 
from  Pennsylvania  [Mr.  Ross]  has  paraded  this  charge  in  the  most 
hideous  colors.  My  friend  from  North  Carolina  has  also  been  quite 
graphic  in  setting  it  forth,  declaring  that  the  free  States  "  keep  up 
and  foster  in  their  bosoms  Abolition  societies,  whose  main  purpose 
is  to  scatter  firebrands  throughout  the  South,  to  incite  servile 
insurrections,  and  stimulate  by  licentious  pictures  our  negroes  to 
invade  the  persons  of  our  white  women."  Sir,  this  is  a  serious 
accusation,  and  if  true,  the  South  unquestionably  has  a  right  to 
complain.  I  will  not  charge  the  gentleman  with  fabricating  it, 
but  I  regret  that  he  did  not  produce  the  evidence  on  which  he  felt 


10  THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION. 

authorized  to  make  it.  I  deny  the  charge.  I  deny  that  the  free 
States  "  keep  up  and  foster  in  their  bosoms  Abolition  societies," 
for  any  purpose.  The  Abolition  societies,  now  known  as  such, 
belong  to  what  is  called  the  Garrison  School.  They  are  voluntary 
associations  of  men  and  women,  the  Northern  States  being  no  more 
responsible  for  their  doings  than  the  Southern  States.  Unlike  all 
other  parties  in  the  North,  they  lay  down  their  platform  outside  of 
the  Constitution,  and  hold  that  the  freedom  of  the  black  race  can 
only  be  accomplished  by  its  ovei'throw  ;  but  they  rely  upon  moral 
force  alone  for  the  triumph  of  their  cause.  I  deny  that  they  are 
guilty  of  inciting,  or  of  wishing  to  incite  servile  insurrections,  or 
of  scattering  firebrands  among  the  slaves,  or  licentious  pictures. 
These  Abolitionists  are  generally  the  friends  of  peace,  non-resist- 
ants, the  enemies  of  violence  and  blood  ;  and  they  would  regret 
as  much  as  any  people  in  the  Union  to  see  a  servile  war  set  on  fcrot 
by  the  millions  in  the  land  of  slavery.  I  will  add  further,  while 
dissenting  entirely  from  their  constitutional  doctrines,  that  they 
have  among  them  some  of  the  purest  and  most  gifted  men  in  the 
nation.  But  is  the  charge  meant  for  the  Free  Soil  party  of  the 
North  ?  Are  they  the  incendiaries  complained  of,  and  their  doc- 
trines the  firebrands  which  have  been  scattered  in  the  South?  We 
hold  that  Congress  should  abolish  slavery  in  this  District,  prevent 
its  extension  beyond  its  present  limits,  refuse  the  admission  of  any 
more  slave  States,  and  that  the  government  should  relieve  itself 
from  all  responsibility  for  the  existence  or  support  of  slavery  where 
it  has  the  constitutional  power  thus  to  relieve  itself,  leaving  it  a 
State  institution,  dependent  upon  State  law  exclusively.  We  are 
for  non-intervention  in  its  true  sense.  Such  is  our  creed,  and  we 
proclaim  it  North  and  South.  If  it  is  incendiary,  then  are  we  guilty, 
for  our  newspapers  circulate*  in  the  slaveholding  States.  If  our 
faith  is  a  firebrand,  we  have  scattered  it,  not  among  your  slaves, 
who  are  unable  to  read,  but  among  their  owners.  Acting  within 
the  Constitution,  and  resolving  not  to  go  beyond  its  granted  powers, 
we  mean  to  avail  ourselves  of  a  free  press  to  disseminate  our  views 
far  and  wide.  If  truth  is  incendiary,  we  shall  still  proclaim  it ;  if 
our  constitutional  acts  are  firebrands,  we  shall  nevertheless  do  our 
duty.  Sir,  this  charge  has  been  conceived  in  the  diseased  brain  of 
the  slaveholder,  or  the  sickly  conscience  of  the  doughface.  I  reiter- 
ate my  denial  that  any  party  in  the  free  States  has  labored  to  bring 
about  a  war  between  the  two  races  in  the  South.  I  am  aware 
that  we  have  our  ultra  men  among  us,  nor  do  I  pretend  to  justify 
all  they  have  done.     They  must  answer  for  themselves,  and  can- 


THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION.  11 

not  involve  the  North  in  their  responsibility.  But  there  is  no  party 
in  the  free  States  that  harbors  any  such  purpose,  or  that  would  not 
shudder  at  the  contemplation  of  so  merciless  and  heart-appalling  a 
project. 

Passing  over  the  subject  of  slavery  in  this  District,  which  I 
shall  notice  in  a  different  connection,  I  come  now  to  the  Wilmot 
Proviso.  This  would  seem  to  be  the  sum  of  all  wrongs  and  out- 
rages —  the  aggression  of  aggressions,  —  the  monster  that,  if  not 
at  once  throttled  and  destroyed,  is  to  rend  the  Union  asunder. 
Let  us  once  more  look  it  in  the  face,  take  its  dimensions,  and  con- 
template its  supposed  power  of  mischief.  This  Wilmot  Proviso 
has  been  much  discussed  in  Congress  and  throughout  the  country ; 
it  might  be  thought,  by  this  time,  a  stale  topic ;  yet  it  is  far  from 
being  an  uninteresting  one,  as  the  continual  discussion  of  it  here 
evinces.  Endeavoring  as  much  as  possible  to  lay  aside  passion,  I 
would  say  to  Southern  gentlemen,  "  Let  us  reason  together.'" 
Suppose  this  alarming  measure  should  pass  both  houses  of  Con- 
gress, and  receive  the  Executive  sanction,  I  ask  wherein  would 
consist  the  aggression  upon  the  guaranteed  rights  of  the  South  ? 
Would  not  every  slave  State  still  retain  its  sovereignty  over  its 
peculiar  institution  ?  Would  not  the  rights  of  the  master,  as 
sanctioned  by  local  law,  remain  unimpaired  ?  Look  next  at  the 
constitutional  compromises.  The  free  States  bound  themselves  to 
allow  you  to  pursue  your  fugitives  upon  their  soil.  Would  the 
adoption  of  the  proviso  affect,  in  the  smallest  degree,  this  right  ? 
We  agreed  that  you  might  carry  on  —  or,  if  you  please,  that  we 
would  join  you  in  carrying  on  —  the  slave-trade,  for  twenty  years. 
We  faithfully  lived  up  to  this  compromise ;  and  there  is,  long 
since,  an  end  of  it.  Of  course,  the  proviso  can  have  nothing  to 
do  with  it.  Lastly,  it  was  stipulated  that  every  five  of  your  slaves, 
for  the  purposes  of  taxation  and  representation,  should  be  counted 
equal  to  three  of  our  citizens.  Most  obviously,  the  passage  of  the 
proviso  would  not  invalidate  the  rights  of  the  South  growing  out 
of  this  compromise.  The  old  slave  States,  and  those  subsequently 
admitted,  would  retain  all  the  advantages  of  the  original  bargain. 
Now,  I  maintain  that  these  subjects  of  taxation,  representation, 
and  the  recovery  of  fugitives,  are  the  only  matters  touching  which 
Congress  can  constitutionally  legislate  in  favor  of  slavery.  So  far, 
I  admit,  our  fathers  compromised  the  freedom  of  the  black  race, 
and  involved  the  free  States  in  the  political  obligation  to  uphold 
slavery.  Beyond  these  express  compromises,  they  did  not  go  nor 
design  to  go.     They  yielded  thus  much   to   the  South,  under  the 


12  THE   SLAVERY  QUESTION. 

impelling  desire  for  union,  believing  that  the  powers  of  the  gov- 
ernment, with  the  exceptions  expressly  made,  would  be  "  actively 
and  perpetually  exerted  on  the  side  of  freedom,"  and  that  slavery 
would  gradually  cease  to  exist  in  the  country.  I  do  not  speak  of 
this  as  matter  of  conjecture.  As  early  as  1774,  Mr.  Jefferson 
declared  that  "  the  abolition  of  domestic  slavery  is,  the  greatest 
object  of  desire  in  these  colonies  ;  "  and  the  opinion  was  then 
common  throughout  the  country  that  this  object  could  be  at- 
tained by  discontinuing  the  importation  of  slaves  from  abroad. 
The  action  of  the  memorable  Congress  of  this  year,  and  popular 
movements  in  all  the  colonies,  about  this  time,  evinced  a  very  de- 
cided determination  to  carry  into  practice  this  non-importation 
policy.  This,  I  presume,  will  be  denied  by  no  one.  Our  revolu- 
tionary struggle  commenced  soon  afterwards  ;  and,  basing  its  justi- 
fication upon  the  inalienable  rights  of  man,  it  could  not  fail  to  give 
an  impulse  to  the  spirit  of  liberty  favorable  to  the  abolition  of 
slavery  in  the  colonies.  After  the  war  was  over,  Mr.  Jefferson 
himself  declared  that  such  had  been  its  tendency.  Indeed,  our 
fathers  could  not  avoid  seeing  that  slavery  was  practically  at  war 
with  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  their  own  example  in 
resisting  the  tyranny  of  Britain.  In  1787  the  Federal  Constitu- 
tion was  framed,  and  it  is  a  noteworthy  fact,  that  the  word  slave  is 
not  to  be  found  in  it.  According  to  Mr.  Madison,  this  word  was 
studiously  omitted,  to  avoid  the  appearance  of  a  sanction,  by  the 
Federal  Government,  of  the  idea  "  that  there  could  be  property  in 
man."  This  circumstance,  it  seems  to  me,  is  very  significant. 
The  Constitution  is  so  guardedly  framed,  that,  were  slavery  at 
any  moment  to  cease  to  exist,  scarcely  a  clause  or  a  word  would 
require  to  be  changed.  Who  does  not  see  in  this,  that  whilst  our 
fathers  were  framing  a  constitution  that  was  to  last  for  ages,  the 
idea  stood  out  palpably  before  their  minds  that  the  days  of  slavery 
were  numbered?  Be  it  remembered,  too,  that  at  the  time  the 
Constitution  was  adopted,  slavery  had  already  been  abolished,  or 
measures  had  been  taken  for  its  abolition,  in  seven  of  the  thirteen 
colonies  ;  and  at  the  very  time  the  convention  which  formed  the 
Constitution  was  in  session,  maturing  its  provisions,  the  Congress 
of  the  Confederation  was  sitting  at  New  York,  enacting  the  cele- 
brated ordinance  by  which  territory  enough  for  five  large  States 
was  forever  consecrated  to  freedom.  Every  inch  of  soil  which 
the  government  then  owned  was,  by  this  ordinance,  made  free,  and 
a  preponderance  secured  in  favor  of  the  North  of  twelve  non- 
slaveholding  to  only  six  slaveholding  States.     Thus  we  see,  that 


THE    SLAVERY   QUESTION.  13 

at  the  time  the  government  was  about  to  enter  upon  its  career, 
and  to  exemplify  the  spirit  of  its  founders,  slavery  was  a  receding 
power,  a  decaying  interest,  a  perishing  institution.  Not  chains 
and  stripes,  but  freedom,  was  the  dominant  idea,  the  great  thought 
of  our  fathers.  They  would  have  been  astounded  at  the  sugges- 
tion that  slavery  was  to  be  perpetuated  in  this  country,  as  the 
source  of  all  blessings,  and  lauded  as  "  the  corner-stone  of  our 
republican  edifice."  It  was  among  them,  and  had  been  forced 
upon  them  by  the  mother  country  ;  and  not  being  able  immedi- 
ately to  get  rid  of  it,  it  was  to  be  tolerated,  and  endured,  till  meas- 
ures could  be  taken  for  its  final  extirpation  from  the  land.  And 
if  they  regarded  it  as  a  curse,  and  did  not  expect  it  to  be  perpetu- 
ated where  it  then  existed,  much  less  did  they  imagine  that  it  was 
to  be  carried  into  new  regions  under  the  sanction  of  the  govern- 
ment  of  their  formation,  and  become  the  great  central  power  and 
all-absorbing  interest  of  the  nation.  Sir,  the  thought  is  mon- 
strous, that  the  Northern  States,  when  reluctantly  agreeing  to 
those  compromises  by  which  slavery  received  a  qualified  support 
in  the  old  States,  intended  that  those  compromises  should  after- 
wards be  indefinitely  extended  over  the  American  Continent.  Let 
it  be  borne  in  mind,  also,  as  corroborating  the  view  under  consider- 
ation, that  the  founders  of  our  government  had  no  expectation  that 
the  boundaries  of  the  United  States,  as  established  by  the  Treaty 
of  1783,  would  ever  be  enlarged.  There  is  not  one  syllable  of  evi- 
dence, either  in  the  Constitution  itself,  or  the  history  of  its  forma- 
tion, to  justify  the  idea  that  the  acquisition  of  foreign  territory  was 
contemplated.  This  has  been  admitted  by  distinguished  Southern 
gentlemen  in  this  hall,  and  in  the  other  end  of  the  Capitol.  Mr. 
Jefferson  seems  to  have  entertained  this  view ;  for  he  questioned 
the  power  of  the  nation  to  annex  foreign  territory  without  an  amend- 
ment of  the  Constitution.  I  deduce  from  this  the  obvious  and  in- 
evitable conclusion,  that  the  Constitution  was  made  for  the  United 
Mates  as  then  bounded,  and  that  the  compromises  on  the  subject  of 
slavery,  to  which  the  Northern  States  assented,  had  reference  alone 
to  the  slavery  of  the  then  slaveholding  States  ;  the  slavery  that  was 
dwindling  and  perishing  under  the  weight  of  its  own  acknowledged 
evils  ;  the  slavery  that  our  fathers  prevented  from  spreading  into  the 
only  territory  then  belonging  to  the  government ;  the  slavery  that 
was  almost  universally  expected,  at  no  very  distant  day,  to  be  swept 
from  the  Republic.  The  adoption  of  the  Wilmot  Proviso,  there- 
fore, would  be  in  harmony  with  the  Constitution,  with  the  views 
and  expectations  of  the  people  at  the  time  of  its  formation,  and 


14  THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION. 

with  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  on  which  our  fathers 
planted  themselves  in  their  struggle  against  a  foreign  yoke.  It  is 
impossible  to  escape  this  conclusion  without  contradicting  the  truth 
of  history,  and  branding  the  founders  of  the  government  as 
hypocrites,  who,  after  having  paraded  the  rights  of  man  before  the 
world,  and  achieved  their  own  freedom,  deliberately  went  to  work 
to  found  an  empire  of  slaves.  And  yet  Southern  gentlemen  speak 
of  the  restriction  of  slavery  as  an  aggression  upon  their  rights  ! 
What  makes  this  charge  look  still  worse  is  the  fact,  that  the 
supreme  power  of  legislation  by  Congress  over  the  Territories  of 
the  government  has  been  uniformly  exercised  from  its  beginning 
till  the  year  1848,  and  acquiesced  in  by  all  its  departments.  The 
power  in  question  —  that  of  restricting  slavery  —  Avas  exercised  in 
1787  ;  it  was  exercised  in  1820  ;  it  was  exercised  in  the  passage  of 
the  resolutions  annexing  Texas  in  1845,  and  in  its  most  objection- 
able form  ;  and  it  wras  again  exercised  in  1848,  with  the  sanction  of 
a  slaveholding  President.  And  still  we  are  told  that  the  passage 
of  the  Proviso  would  be  such  an  intolerable  outrage  as  to  justify 
the  dissolution  of  the  Union  ! 

Mr.  Chairman,  I  have  now  briefly  noticed  most  of  the  alleged 

aggressions  of  the  North.     The  historical  facts  I  have  brought  for- 
es? o 

ward,  bearing  upon  the  question  of  slavery  restriction,  have  been 
often  presented  ;  but  they  cannot  be  too  often  repeated,  or  too  care- 
fully remembered,  in  the  present  crisis.  Sir,  it  is  as  true  at  this 
day  as  at  any  former  period  of  our  history,  that  "  a  frequent  recur- 
rence to  first  principles  is  absolutely  necessary  to  preserve  the 
blessings  of  liberty." 

Turning  now  to  the  other  side  of  the  picture,  I  propose  to  glance 
at  that  policy  and  some  of  those  acts  by  which  slavery,  instead  of 
wearing  out  its  life  within  its  original  limits,  has  been  transplanted 
into  new  regions,  fostered  by  the  government  as  a  great  national 
interest,  and  interwoven  with  the  whole  fabric  of  its  policy.  I  shall 
make  no  special  complaint  about  "  Southern  aggression,"  for  it  will 
appear,  as  I  have  already  stated,  that  the  slave  power  has  built 
itself  up  by  the  cooperation  or  acquiescence  of  the  non-slaveholding 
States.  Nor  shall  I  claim  any  novelty  for  the  facts  I  am  about  to 
present.  They  form  a  part  of  the  history  of  the  country  and  the 
public  records  of  the  government.  Through  various  channels  they 
have  found  their  way  to  the  people  ;  yet  it  may  not  be  entirely  a 
useless  labor  to  gather  them  together,  and  endeavor  to  keep  them 
in  remembrance  in  determining  what  further  concessions  shall  be 
made  to  the  demands  of  slavery. 


THE    SLAVERY    QUESTION.  15 

At  the  time  the  Federal  Constitution  was  adopted,  the  States 
of  North  Carolina  and  Georgia  claimed  certain  territory,  which 
they  afterwards  ceded  or  relinquished  to  the  General  Government ; 
and  out  of  this  territory  the  three  States  of  Tennessee,  Alabama, 
and  Mississippi  were  formed,  and  successively  admitted  into  the 
Union.  The  compromises  by  which  the  Northern  States  had 
bound  themselves  in  reference  to  slavery  in  the  old  States,  were 
now  stretched  over  these  new  ones,  containing  at  present  a  slave 
population  considerably  exceeding  that  of  the  entire  Union  at  the 
time  of  its  formation.  I  have  already  shown  that  such  an  accession 
of  slaveholding  States,  thus  forcing  the  North  into  a  further  part- 
nership with  the  curses  of  slavery,  was  not  contemplated  by  our 
fathers.  It  was  accomplished,  however,  and  of  course  by  the  aid 
of  Northern  votes. 

In  1808  we  gave  fifteen  millions  of  dollars  for  the  Territory  of 
Louisiana,  and  the  three  large  slave  States  of  Louisiana,  Arkansas, 
and  Missouri,  were  subsequently  carved  out  of  it,  and  from  time 
to  time  admitted  into  the  Union.  They  contain  a  slave  population 
of  upwards  of  three  hundred  thousand  souls.  Here,  again,  the 
obligation  of  the  free  States  to  support  slavery  was  enlarged,  and 
the  fond  expectations  of  our  fathers  disappointed. 

In  1819  we  gave  five  millions  of  dollars  for  the  Territory  of 
Florida.  We  did  not  buy  it  on  account  of  the  value  of  its  lands, 
or  of  the  added  wealth  it  would  bring  into  the  Union,  but  mainly 
to  strengthen  the  slaveholding  interest.  Difficulties  were  appre- 
hended from  the  pursuit  of  fugitives  into  the  territory  wdiilst  it 
continued  a  Spanish  province,  and  to  obviate  these  difficulties,  and 
at  the  same  time  to  widen  the  domain  of  slavery,  the  purchase  was 
made.  Florida  was  subsequently  admitted,  by  the  help  of  Northern 
votes,  into  full  fellowship  with  Massachusetts  and  the  other  free 
States,  whose  relations  with  slavery  were  thus  again  extended,  in 
'  violation  of  the  faith  upon  which  the  Union  had  been  consum- 
mated. 

In  1815  Texas  was  annexed,  containing  territory  enough  for  five 
or  six  States.  That  this  was  a  measure  "  essentially  Southern  in 
its  character,"  is  placed  beyond  all  doubt  by  the  records  of  the 
State  Department.  It  is  likewise  proved  by  the  declarations  of 
Southern  members  of  Congress  in  1814,  and  by  the  avowals  of  the 
Southern  press  and  of  leading  men  in  the  South,  from  the  time  the 
question  was  first  agitated  till  the  project  was  consummated.  No 
man,  it  seems  to  me,  can  read  the  history  of  Texas  from  its  first 
settlement  by  emigrants  from  this  country,  and  for  one  moment 


16  THE    SLAVERY    QUESTION. 

doubt  the  truth  of  what  I  assert.  I  know  it  has  been  said  on  this 
floor  that  the  acquisition  of  Texas  was  not  a  Southern  measure,  but 
a  measure  of  the  National  Democratic  party.  I  am  aware  too  that 
John  Quincy  Adams  declared,  in  1845,  that  it  was  "in  its  concep- 
tion and  in  its  conclusion  a  Whiff  measure."  With  these  declara- 
tions  I  have  nothing  to  do.  I  do  not  charge  any  party  in  the 
North  with  favoring  annexation  with  the  design  of  extending  slav- 
ery. I  speak  not  as  a  partisan,  but  as  a  seeker  of  facts,  bearing 
upon  the  alleged  charge  of  Northern  aggression  ;  and  what  I  assert 
is, •  that  while  the  motive  of  the  South  in  grasping  Texas  was  un- 
masked, and  was  in  fact  glaringly  manifest,  the  North  was  induced 
to  come  to  her  rescue,  and  thus  added  an  empire  of  slavery  to  her 
dominions  in  the  Southwest.  Was  this  a  Northern  aggression? 
Nine  slaveholding  States  have  been  added  to  the  Union  since  the 
date  of  its  formation,  and  five  of  them  out  of  soil  then  the  property 
of  foreign  nations.  All  this  has  been  generously  done  by  the  free 
States,  for  they  have  had  the  strength  in  every  instance  to  prevent 
these  additions,  and  this  constantly  augmenting  Southern  power. 

The  facts  I  have  stated  are  significant.  They  show  that  the 
Northern  States,  instead  of  aggressing  upon  the  rights  of  the  South, 
have  aided  her  in  incorporating  additional  slaveholding  States  into 
the  Union,  whenever  such  aid  has  been  demanded.  But  this  is  not 
all.  Some  thirty  years  ago  the  States  of  Kentucky,  Tennessee, 
Alabama,  Mississippi,  Georgia,  North  Carolina,  Arkansas,  and  Mis- 
souri, were  more  or  less  incumbered  with  an  Indian  population. 
The  white  man  and  his  slave  were  shut  out  from  laro-e  regions  of 
those  States  by  the  barriers  of  the  red  man.  which  the  States  them- 
selves had  no  power  to  remove.  All  these  regions  are  now 
redeemed  from  the  Indian,  and  actual  slavery  extended  where  it 
could  not  go  before  ;  and  all  this  has  been  done  by  the  help  of 
Northern  votes  ;  for  without  that  help,  the  laws  could  not  have 
been  passed,  nor  the  treaties  have  been  ratified,  by  which  this  great 
extension  of  slavery  in  so  many  great  States  was  accomplished.1 
What  a  commentary  upon  the  charge  of  Northern  aggression  ! 

In  1778  and  1790  the  States  of  Virginia  and  Maryland  ceded  to 
the  General  Government  the  territory  constituting  the  District  of 
Columbia,  till  the  late  retrocession  of  the  portion  ceded  by  the 
former.  These  cessions,  under  the  Constitution,  necessarily  gave 
Congress  the  exclusive  power  of  legislation  over  the  territory  ceded, 
and  its  inhabitants.  Congress  accepted  these  grants, and  in  1801  re- 
enacted  the  slave  codes  of  Maryland  and  Virginia,  and  thus  legal- 

1  Benton's  late  speech. 


THE    SLAVERY   QUESTION.  17 

ized  and  nationalized  slavery  in  this  District.     Slaves  are  now  held 
here  by  virtue  of  this  law,  and  have  been  so  held  for  nearly  half  a 
century.     The  free  States  have  always  had  strength  enough  in  Con- 
gress to  repeal  it,  but  they  have  forborne  to  do  so.   They  have  done 
more  ;  they  have  permitted  you  to  carry  on,  by  their  sanction,  the 
slave  traffic  here,  which  is  interdicted  by  your  own  slave  States. 
This  execrable  commerce,  which   the  laws  of  the  civilized  world 
pronounce  piracy,  punishable  with  death,  and  which  even  the  Sul- 
tan of  Turkey  and  the  Bey  of  Tunis  have  put  under  their  ban  ; 
this  "  piratical  warfare,"  as  Jefferson   called  it,  and  which  he  de- 
clared, three  quarters  of  a  century  ago,  to  be  the  "  opprobrium  of 
infidel  powers ; "  this  heir  of  all  abominations  has  existed  here  for 
nearly  fifty  years  by  our  permission,  —  here  in  the  heart  of  this 
Model  Republic,  around  the  walls  of  its  Capitol,  and  under  the 
folds  of  its  flag  ;  here,  in  the  noon  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and 
under  the  full  blaze  of  Christian  truth  !      And  Northern  men  have 
not  only  upheld  this  traffic  thus  far,  but  their  forbearance  toward 
the  South  inclines  some  of  them  to  uphold  it  still  longer.     I  doubt 
if  there  are  men  enough  in  Congress  to-day  to  pass  a  bill  through 
either  House  for  its  abolition.     And  yet,  Southern  gentlemen  talk 
about  the  aggressions  of  the  North,  and  threaten  to  break  up  the 
Union  to  secure  their  deliverance  from  our  oppression  !     Will  they 
snap  asunder  the  cords  that  bind  us,  in  anticipation  of  an  act  of 
justice  ?     Suppose  Congress  should  abolish  slavery  and  the  slave- 
trade  here  ;  would  such  abolition  interfere  in   any  way  with  the 
constitutional  rights  of  the  slaveholding  States  ?     We  in  the  North 
are   upholding  these   evils  in  this    District;  Ave   are  morally   and 
politically  responsible  for  their  continuance  ;  and  I  say  to  gentlemen 
from  the  South,  that  if  by  the  exercise  of  an  unquestionable  power 
of  Congress  we  rid  ourselves  of  this  responsibility,  it  is  our  business, 
not  yours.     You  have  no  right,  to  complain,  and  your  clamor  in  this 
respect  about  Northern   aggression   ought   to   be  regarded   as  an 
insult  to  the  free  States. 

I  pass  to  another  topic.  Since  the  formation  of  the  government, 
if  I  have  rightly  calculated,  about  five  hundred  thousand  dollars 
have  been  paid  by  the  United  States,  either  directly  or  indirectly* 
for  fugitive  slaves  that  have  taken  shelter  among  the  Creek  and 
Seminole  Indians.  The  most  of  this  sum  has  been  paid  to  the 
slaveholders  of  the  State  of  Georgia  alone,  and  directly  from  the 
public  treasury. 

Have  the  slave  States  the  right  thus  to  call  on  the  General  Gov- 
ernment and  the  common  fund  of  the  nation  to  aid  them  ?     It  has 
2 


IS  THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION. 

been  truly  said  by  an  eminent  man,  himself  a  slaveholder,  that 
"  the  existence,  continuance,  and  support  of  slavery  depend  exclu- 
sively upon  the  power  and  authority  of  the  several  States  in  which 
it  is  situated.'  It  was  not  the  intention  of  our  fathers,  as  I  have 
shown,  that  this  government  should  interfere  with  slavery  in  the 
States,  either  to  strengthen  it  or  to  weaken  it.  It  is  their  own 
affair  ;  and  if  their  laws  are  not  strong  enough  to  give  it  life,  it  must 
submit  to  its  doom.  When  your  bondman  comes  among  us  in  the 
character  of  a  fugitive,  you  have  the  right,  guaranteed  by  the  ex- 
press terms  of  the  Constitution,  to  carry  him  again  into  slavery  ;  but 
have  no  right  to  call  upon  us  to  pay  our  money  for  slaves  escaping 
into  Canada,  Mexico,  or  among  the  savages  and  swamps  of  a  Span- 
ish province.  Believing  slavery  to  be  a  great  moral  and  political 
evil,  we  will  not  go  beyond  the  express  letter  of  our  covenant  in 
giving  it  our  support.  The  Constitution,  in  the  language  of  Judge 
McLean,  acts  upon  slaves  as  persons,  and  not  as  property.  Con- 
gress has  uniformly  been  governed  by  this  principle  ;  and  you  might 
as  well  call  upon  us  to  pay  for  your  runaway  mules  as  your  slaves. 
The  action  of  the  treaty-making  power  has  been  different.  A 
large  number  of  slaves  fled  from  their  masters  during  our  last  war 
with  Great  Britain;  and  for  twenty  years  did  this  government  ply 
its  diplomacy  in  urging  the  British  Government  to  pay  for  these 
fugitives.  The  sum  of  one  million  two  hundred  and  four  thousand 
dollars  was  at  length  obtained  and  paid  to  Southern  slaveholders. 
This  open  espousal  of  the  cause  of  slavery  by  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment seems  to  have  been  sanctioned  by  the  free  States.  It  was 
not  the  work,  exclusively,  of  Southern  men.  The  policy  of  our 
fathers  was  to  discourage  slavery,  and  as  far  as  possible  to  divorce 
the  government  from  it.  Is  the  reversal  of  this  policy  a  Northern 
aggression  ? 

Again,  in  1831  and  1833,  the  ships  Comet  and  Eifcomiui)), 
laden  with  slaves,  were  wrecked  on  British  soil ;  and  the  Federal 
Government,  again  hoisting  its  flag  over  the  peculiar  institution, 
obtained  from  Great  Britain  twenty-five  thousand  pounds  for  slaves 
lost  bv  these  accidents.  Similar  losses  were  incurred  by  the  sub- 
sequent fate  of  the  Enterprise^  Creole,  and  Hermosa^  and  the 
United  States  threatened  Great  Britain  with  war,  for  refusing  to 
foot  these  bills  of  Southern  slaveholders.  An  honorable  member 
of  this  House  was  virtually  expelled  from  this  hall  in  184:2,  for 
introducing  resolutions  denying  the  constitutional  power  of  the  gov- 
ernment to  support  the  coastwise  slave-trade,  and  declaring  its  duty 
to  relieve  itself  from  all  action  in  favor  of  slavery.     The  Senate, 


THE    SLAVERY    QUESTION.  19 

not  wishing  to  be  outdone  by  the  House,  unanimously  adopted 
resolutions  declaring  it  to  be  the  duty  of  the  government  to  protect 
by  its  flag  the  rights  of  American  slaveholders  in  British  ports, 
where  by  the  local  law  their  slaves  would  otherwise  become  free. 
Were  these  ajTo-ressions  upon  Southern  rights  ? 

Co  I  G 

Merely  glancing  at  the  unwarranted  efforts  of  the  government 
to  obtain  pay  for  fugitives  to  Canada  and  Mexico,  in  1826  and 
1828,  I  proceed  to  notice  a  more  remarkable  example  of  Federal 
intervention  in  favor  of  slavery.  About  twenty-five  years  ago, 
when  Mexico  and  Colombia,  who  had  just  achieved  their  independ- 
ence of  Spain,  and  emancipated  their  slaves,  were  threatening  to 
grasp  the  island  of  Cuba,  our  government  distinctly  intimated  to 
these  young  republics  that  they  must  abandon  their  purpose.  And 
why  ?  Because  emancipation  in  Cuba  might  otherwise  take  place, 
and  the  contagion  spread  in  the  United  States.  Thus  the  Federal 
Government  espoused  the  cause  of  slavery  in  Cuba,  in  order  at  the 
same  time  to  perpetuate  it  in  our  own  boasted  land  of  freedom.  It 
did  the  same  thing  in  1829.  Were  these  acts  Northern  aggressions? 
I  need  scarcely  add  in  this  connection,  that  the  main,  if  not  the 
sole  reason,  why  the  United  States  have  refused  to  acknowledge 
the  independence  of  Hayti,  or  to  hold  intercourse  with  her,  is,  that 
the  independence  of  a  black  republic  might  prove  dangerous  to  the 
perpetuity  of  American  slavery.  Thus  the  people  of  the  North 
are  deprived  of  the  profits  which  would  arise  from  establisheclcom- 
mercial  relations  between  the  two  governments,  in  order  that 
Southern  slavery  may  be  sustained. 

In  1807,  Congress  passed  a  law  regulating  the  coastwise  slave- 
trade  in  vessels  of  over  forty  tons  burden,  and  prescribing  minutely 
the  manifests,  forms  of  entry  at  the  custom-house,  and  specifications 
to  be  made  by  the  masters  of  such  vessels.  The  North  was  thus 
made  responsible  for  a  traffic  which  is  piracy  by  the  law  of  nations  ; 
and  such  has  been  our  forbearance  toward  the  South,  that  we  have 
made  no  effort  to  relieve  ourselves  of  this  responsibility.  Take 
another  item  of  Congressional  legislation  in  favor  of  slaverv,  —  the 
Act  of  1793.  This  act  made  it  the  duty  of  State  magistrates  to  assist 
in  the  recapture  of  fugitives,  and  for  nearly  fifty  years  the  slave- 
holders had  the  benefit  of  it,  in  the  prompt  interference  of  the 
authorities  of  the  North  in  behalf  of  their  institution.  This  act,  so 
far  as  it  imposed  duties  on  State  magistrates,  was  unconstitutional 
and  has  been  so  decided ;  but  it  committed  the  free  States  to  the 
support  of  slavery,  and  gave  important  aid  to  the  South  daring  the 
whole  period  named.     Nor  is  this  all.     Most  of  the  free  States  re- 


20  THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION.    . 

enacted  the  substance  of  this  act,  as  to  the  duty  of  State  magistrates, 
and  its  provisions  and  penalties  respecting  the  harboring  or  con- 
cealing of  fugitives,  —  thus  legislating  in  favor  of  slavery,  and  of 
course  out  of  a  tolerant  spirit  toward  the  South.  There  is  no  con- 
stitutional or  moral  obligation  which  required  it.  It  was  a  bounty, 
a  gratuity,  bestowed  by  the  North  in  token  of  sympathy  for  slave- 
holders ;  for  the  recovery  of  fugitives,  and  the  penalty  for  obstruct- 
ing their  recapture,  are  matters  of  federal  cognizance  entirely, 
as  I  have  already  shown.  Yet  these  enactments  now  stand  unre- 
pealed on  the  statute  books  of  several  of  the  Northern  States. 

In  my  own  State  we  have  a  lawr  punishing,  by  a  fine  not  exceed- 
ing five  hundred  dollars,  the  harboring  of  a  fugitive  slave,  as  "  an 
offense  against  the  peace  and  dignity  of  the  State  of  Indiana."  And 
this  law  is  not  a  dead  letter.  Men  are  indicted  and  punished  under 
it.  Our  courts  and  juries  do  not  hesitate  to  regard  it.  Our  Leg- 
islature, I  know,  is  exceedingly  well  disposed  toward  it ;  for  all 
attempts  to  repeal  our  "  black  laws  "  (and  some  of  them  are  much 
blacker, than  this)  have  thus  far  signally  failed.  Is  all  this  legisla- 
tion of  the  North  in  behalf  of  the  slaveholders  an  aggression  upon 
their  rights  ? 

I  have  already  stated  that  Florida  was  purchased  because  it  was 
demanded  by  the  slaveholding  interest.  I  omitted  the  fact,  that 
under  the  treaty  by  which  it  was  acquired,  and  the  laws  of  Con- 
gress enacted  to  carry  it  into  effect,  this  government  felt  itself 
called  upon  to  pay  to  the  Florida  slaveholders  forty  thousand  dollars 
for  slaves  lost  by  the  invasion  of  our  troops  in  1812.  I  have  also 
passed  over  the  inhuman  slave  code  by  which  Florida  was  governed 
while  a  Territory,  and  which,  of  course,  derived  its  validity  from 
the  sanction  of  Congress.  I  next  observe  that  our  first  Seminole 
or  Florida  War  received  its  birth  in  the  jealous  vigilance  of  the 
Federal  Government  in  behalf  of  the  interests  of  slavery.  It  was 
occasioned  by  the  destruction  of  a  negro  fort  on  the  Appalachicola 
River  in  1816,  by  officers  and  troops  in  the  service  of  the  United 
States.  About  three  hundred  men,  women,  and  children,  were 
killed.  It  is  true  they  were  mostly  fugitives  ;  but  they  were  living 
peaceably  in  Spanish  territory.  Certairdy,  the  government  was 
under  no  obligation  to  commit  this  wholesale  murder,  merely  be- 
cause the  slaveholders  of  Florida  desired  it.  Yet  Congress,  in 
1839,  passed  a  law  by  which  the  sum  of  five  thousand  dollars  was 
paid  out  of  the  common  treasury  of  the  government,  to  its  officers 
and  crew,  for  blowing  up  this  fort.  Was  this,  too,  a  Northern 
aggression  ? 


THE    SLAVERY    QUESTION.  21 

The  second  Florida  War  was  likewise  waged  and  carried  on  for 
the  benefit  of  slaveholders.  Of  the  necessity  for  this  war  at  the 
time  the  nation  saw  fit  to  engage  in  it,  I  shall  not  speak.  With 
its  immediate  cause  or  occasion  I  have  nothing  to  do.  I  only 
assert  (and  this  is  sufficient  for  my  purpose)  that  the  war  had  its 
origin  in  the  long-continued  previous  interference  of  the  Federal 
Government  in  favor  of  the  slaveholders  of  Georgia,  Alabama,  and 
Florida.  Slaves  fled  from  their  masters  in  Georgia  and  took  refuge 
among  the  Creek  Indians,  as  far  back  as  cur  Revolutionary  War- 
They  continued  to  escape  till  the  formation  of  the  government ; 
and  as  early  as  1790  the  United  States  entered  into  a  treaty  with 
the  Creeks,  in  which  they  agreed,  in  consideration  of  an  annuity 
of  fifteen  hundred  dollars,  and  certain  goods  mentioned,  to  deliver 
up  the  negroes  then  residing  in  their  territory  to  the  officers  of  the 
United  States.  And  "  during  a  period  of  more  than  thirty  years 
was  the  influence  of  the  Federal  Government  exerted  for  the  pur- 
pose of  obtaining  these  fugitive  slaves,  or  in  extorting  from  the 
Indians  a  compensation  for  their  owners.  The  Senate  was  called 
upon  to  approve  those  treaties  ;  Congress  was  called  on  to  pass  laws, 
and  to  appropriate  money  to  carry  those  treaties  into  effect,  and  the 
people  of  the  free  States  to  pay  the  money  and  bear  the  disgrace, 
in  order  that  slavery  may  be  sustained.  But  the  consequences  of 
these  efforts  still  continue,  and  the  government  has,  to  this  day, 
been  unable  to  extricate  itself  from  the  difficulties  into  which  these 
exertions  in  behalf  of  slavery  precipitated  it."  A  large  portion  of 
the  fugitives  from  Georgia  who  fled  prior  to  1802,  intermarried 
with  the  Seminoles  or  southern  Creek  Indians.  The  government, 
by  treaty  in  1821,  compelled  the  Creeks  to  pay  for  these  fugitives 
five  or  six  times  their  value.  The  Creeks,  supposing  they  had 
thus  acquired  a  good  title  to  them  from  the  United  States,  claimed 
the  wives  and  children  of  the  Seminoles  as  their  property.  The 
latter,  not  being  willing  to  part  with  their  families,  and  being  har- 
assed by  the  demands  of  the  Creeks,  agreed,  by  treaty,  in  1832, 
to  remove  West,  and  reunite  with  the  latter  tribe  ;  the  United 
States  agreeing  to  have  the  claim  of  the  Creeks  investigated,  and 
to  liquidate  it  in  behalf  of  the  Seminoles  if  the  amount  did  not 
exceed  seven  thousand  dollars.  The  Seminoles,  however,  finally 
refused  to  remove  West,  preferring  to  remain  and  fight  the  whites, 
rather  than  hazard  the  loss  of  their  wives  and  children  by  becoming 
again  incorporated  with  the  Creeks.  The  interests  of  the  Florida 
slaveholders  required  that  the  Seminoles  should  be  compelled  to 
emigrate,    and    the   government    embarked    in    the    undertaking. 


22  THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION. 

Such  is  a  brief  summary  of  facts  connected  with  the  celebrated 
Florida  War,  and  showing  the  action  of  this  nation  in  favor  of 
Southern  slaveholders.  The  war  was  begun  by  the  United  States 
to  drive  the  Seminoles  from  their  country.  They  refused  to  go 
because  the  Creeks  would  rob  them  of  their  wives  and  children  in 
their  new  home.  And  the  government  had  by  treaty  forced  these 
Creeks  to  pay  the  slaveholders  an  exorbitant  price  for  these  wives 
and  children  of  the  Seminoles,  and  thus  laid  the  foundation  of  the 
claim  which  prevented  them  from  removing  West,  and  brought  on 
the  war.  It  was,  I  repeat,  a  war  for  the  exclusive  benefit  of 
slavery.  It  was  conceived  and  brought  forth  in  the  unjustifiable 
interference  of  the  Federal  Government  in  favor  of  an  institution 
local  to  the  States  in  which  it  exists,  and  to  which  the  federal 
power  does  not  extend.  These  facts  are  placed  beyond  all  contro- 
versy by  the  documentary  history  of  the  country.  And  this  war 
for  the  capture  of  fugitive  slaves,  and  the  massacre  of  Seminole 
Indians,  with  bloodhounds  from  Cuba  as  our  auxiliaries,  cost  the 
nation  the  estimated  sum  of  forty  millions  of  dollars,  drawn  chiefly 
from  the  pockets  of  the  people  of  the  free  States.  We  united  with 
the  South  in  its  prosecution,  and,  without  any  common  interest  in 
its  objects,  furnished  our  full  share  of  the  men  and  money  required 
in  the  inglorious  struggle.     Was  all  this  a  Northern  ao-oression  ? 

I  come  next  to  our  war  with  Mexico.  This,  so  far  as  the  slave- 
holding  States  were  concerned,  was  carried  on  for  the  acquisition 
of  territory,  into  which  they  designed  to  carry  the  institution  of 
slavery.  History  has  placed  this  remarkable  fact  beyond  all  cavil. 
It  is  proved  by  the  avowals  of  Southern  members  of  Congress,  in 
their  speeches  in  both  houses,  in  1847.  It  is  proved  by  the  mes- 
sages of  Southern  governors,  the  action  of  Southern  Legislatures, 
and  the  language  of  the  Southern  people  generally,  assembled  in 
their  popular  meetings,  during  the  prosecution  of  the  war.  The 
motive  of  the  South  was  not  denied ;  it  was  palpable  and  undis- 
guised. Other  objects  of  the  war  were  mentiQiied,  but  Southern 
politicians  did  not  pretend  that  they  were  controlling,  or  that  the 
extension  of  slavery  was  not  the  principle  which  governed  them  in 
its  prosecution.  But  what  was  the  conduct  of  the  free  States  — 
the  aggressive  and  overbearing  North  —  in  respect  to  this  war  ? 
Sir,  we  gave  you  our  full  share  of  the  men  and  money  required  for 
its  prosecution.  Our  Northern  members  of  Congress,  generally, 
united  with  the  South  in  the  acquisition  of  territory.  I  do  not  say 
they  did  this  for  the  purpose  of  extending  slavery  ;  but  they  did  it ; 
and  when,  a  few  years  before,  our  claim  to  the  whole  of  Oregon 


THE    SLAVERY   QUESTION.  23 

dwindled  down  as  low  as  forty-nine  degrees  —  mainly  under  the 
influence  of  Southern  counsels,  —  the  North  acquiesced.  We  were 
willing,  both  in  regard  to  our  difficulty  with  Great  Britain  and  with 
Mexico,  to  be  governed  somewhat  by  national  considerations,  whilst 
the  policy  of  the  South  in  both  these  cases  was  determined  by  her 
own  sectional  interests,  that  is,  by  the  supposed  effects  which,  in 
the  one  case  or  the  other,  would  be  produced  upon  the  institution 
of  slavery.  In  a  war  with  Mexico  our  armies  could  not  fail  to  be 
triumphant,  and  our  booty  must  necessarily  be  territory.  This 
would  be  adapted  to  slave  labor,  and  would  widen  the  platform  of 
Southern  power.  On  the  other  hand,  the  issue  of  a  war  with  Great 
Britain  would  be  different.  The  South  would  doubtless  be  the 
main  point  of  attack ;  and  thus  the  very  existence  of  slavery  in  its 
strongholds  would  be  jeoparded.  And  should  even  the  whole  of 
Oregon  be  secured,  it  would  only  bring  into  the  Union  additional 
free  States  ;  thus  adding  to  the  power  of  the  North,  instead  of  the 
South,  as  a  section.  Such,  unquestionably,  were  the  considerations 
which  shaped  the  policy  of  Southern  statesmen,  and  through  theui, 
the  policy  of  the  government  itself,  in  our  relations  with  Mexico 
and  Great  Britain.  The  North,  as  I  have  already  said,  acquiesced 
in  both  instances.  Did  this  acquiescence  manifest  an  aggressive 
spirit  toward  the  South? 

In  the  month  of  May,  1836,  this  House  adopted  a  resolution, 
which  excluded  from  being  read  or  considered  "  all  petitions,  me- 
morials, resolutions,  and  propositions,  relating  in  any  way,  or  to  any 
extent  tvhatever,  to  the  subject  of  slavery."  The  substance  of  this 
resolution  continued  in  force  till  1845.  Thus,  while  the  govern- 
ment was  spreading  its  flag  over  the  peculiar  institution  in 'our  in- 
tercourse with  foreign  powers,  and  whilst  slavery  in  this  District 
and  in  the  Territory  of  Florida  was  upheld  by  the  laws  of  Congress, 
we  were  denied  the  right  to  mention  these  grievances  on  this  floor, 
or  to  petition  for  redress.  So  indulgent  and  conciliatory  were  the 
free  States  toward  the  slave  power,  that  a  large  number  of  their 
representatives  in  Congress  united  with  the  slaveholding  members 
in  virtually  suspending  the  right  of  petition  and  the  freedom  of 
speech  in  this  House,  for  the  period  of  nine  years  together.  Was 
this  a  Northern  acoression  ? 

In  some  of  the  Northern  States,  colored  people  enjoy  equal 
political  rights  with  the  whites.  In  nearly  all  of  them  they  are 
regarded  as  citizens.  But  they  cannot  visit  South  Carolina,  Louis- 
iana, and  I  believe  some  three  or  four  other  Southern  States,  with- 
out being  thrown  into  prison  ;  and  if  they  are  not  removed  from  the 


24  THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION. 

State  by  the  persons  in  whose  care  or  employ  they  came,  they 
are  sold  into  slavery.  This  is  a  most  palpable  violation  of  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States,  which  provides  that  "  the  citi- 
zens of  each  State  shall  be  entitled  to  all  the  privileges  and  immu- 
nities of  citizens  of  the  several  States."  And  when  we  send  men 
among  you  to  appeal  peaceably  to  your  own  tribunals  in  behalf  of 
such  citizens,  —  men  honored  by  their  public  standing,  and  clothed 
with  official  authority  for  their  mission,  they  are  driven  out  of  your 
cities  by  mob  menaces  at  the  risk  of  their  lives.  Is  this,  too,  a 
Northern  aggression  ? 

I  pass,  in  conclusion,  to  some  kindred  considerations. 

The  slave  population  of  the  Union  in  1790,  when  the  first  census 
wras  taken,  was  about  seven  hundred  thousand  ;  it  has  now  grown 
to  three  millions,  covering  fifteen  States,  and  more  than  equals  the 
whole  voting  population  of  the  Union.  This,  by  the  way,  surely 
cannot  be  Northern  encroachment.  The  population  of  the  United 
States  in  1840  was  seventeen  millions.  The  white  population  of 
the  South  was  four  millions  seven  hundred  and  eighty-two  thou- 
sand five  hundred  and  twenty.  The  number  of  slaveholders  does 
not  appear  to  be  capable  of  any  exact  ascertainment,  and  has  been 
variously  estimated  at  from  one  hundred  thousand  to  three' hundred 
thousand.  If  we  take  into  the  account  the  actual  number  of  slave 
owners,  exclusive  of  their  families,  a  fair  estimate  at  present  would 
probably  be  two  hundred  thousand ;  and  many  of  these,  doubtless, 
are  minors  and  women.  The  white  population  of  the  free  States 
in  1840  was  nine  millions  six  hundred  and  fifty-four  thousand 
eight  hundred  and  sixty-five.  By  comparing  the  slaveholders  with 
the  non-slaveholders  of  the  South,  according  to  their  number  as 
here  estimated,  it  will  appear  that  the  former  constitute  only  about 
one  twentieth  of  the  white  population  of  the  slaveholding  States. 
This  is  what  we  call  the  slave  power.  This  is  the  force  which  is 
to  dissolve  the  Union,  and  before  which  Northern  men  bow  down 
to  offer  up  their  homage.  These  two  hundred  thousand  slave- 
holders, composed  in  part  of  women  and  minors,  lord  it  over  three 
millions  of  slaves ;  keep  in  subjection  four  or  five  millions  of  non- 
slaveholding  whites  of  the  South,  besides  the  free  blacks  ;  and  at 
the  same  time  control,  at  their  will,  from  nine  to  ten  millions  of 
people  in  the  free  States,  whose  representatives  tremble  and  turn 
pale  at  the  impotent  threats  of  their  Southern  overseers.  Now,  bear- 
ing in  mind  that  the  population  of  the  free  States  is,  and  generally 
has  been,  about  double  that  of  the  slave  States,  let  us  glance  at  the 
monopoly  which  this  slave  power  has  secured  to  itself  of  the  offices 


THE    SLAVERY   QUESTION.  25 

of  the  government.     This  may  serve  further  to  illustrate  the  sub- 
ject of  Northern  aggression. 

Of  the  sixty-one  years  the  government  has  been  in  operation, 
the  Presidency,  with  its  immense  power  and  patronage,  has  been 
filled  by  slaveholders  about  forty-nine  years,  and  by  non-slavehold- 
ers only  a  little  more  than  twelve  years.  Seven  of  our  Presidents 
have  been  slave  owners  —  four  not ;  and  some  of  these  had  to  give 
decided  assurances  to  the  South  in  order  to  be  elected.  The  South 
has  secured  the  important  cabinet  offices  in  the  same  way.  Thus 
of  nineteen  Secretaries  of  State,  fourteen  have  been  slaveholders, 
and  only  five  non-slaveholders.  With  the  exception  of  the  office 
of  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  the  South  has  had  more  than  her 
share  of  all  the  cabinet  appointments.  The  slaveholding  States 
have  had  the  important  office  of  Speaker  of  this  House  for  more 
than  thirty-eight  years,  the  free  States  only  about  twenty-three 
years.  The  South  has  had  twelve  Speakers,  the  North  only  eight. 
The  same  inequality  has  prevailed  in  the  foreign  diplomacy  of  the 
government.  More  of  our  foreign  ministers,  by  about  one  fourth, 
have  been  furnished  by  the  South  than  the  North.  Turn  to  the 
Judiciary.  The  Chief  Justice  has  been  from  the  slave  States 
about  forty-nine  years,  and  from  the  free  States  only  twelve  years, 
although  much  the  larger  portion  of  the  business  of  the  court  origi- 
nates in  the  latter.  And  it  is  a  remarkable  fact,  that  at  no  period 
since  the  formation  of  the  government  has  the  North  had  a  majority 
on  the  Supreme  Bench.  The  South  has  received  the  appointment 
of  thirteen  judges  of  the  court,  the  North  only  twelve  ;  and  has,  I 
repeat,  always  had  the  majority.  Did  the  time  allotted  me  permit, 
I  might  pursue  this  subject  more  in  detail.  It  seems,  however,  un- 
necessary ;  for  a  distinguished  Southern  gentleman  [Mr.  Meade] 
himself  admits,  that  although  the  South  has  been  in  a  numerical 
minority  for  fifty  years,  she  "  has  managed  during  the  greater  part 
of  that  period  to  control  the  destinies  of  this  nation."  What  more 
could  she  ask?  Why,  even  now,  whilst  the  cry  of  Northern 
aggression  continually  meets  us,  the  South  has  a  slaveholding  Pres- 
ident elected  by  Northern  votes,  a  slaveholding  Cabinet,  a  slave- 
holding  Supreme  Court,  a  slaveholding  Speaker  of  this  House,  with 
slaveholding  committees  in  both  Houses  ;  whilst  slaveholding  influ- 
ences are  unceasingly  at  work  in  hushing  the  anti-slavery  agitation, 
and  buying  up  one  after  another  Northern  men,  who  are  as  mer- 
cenary in  heart  as  they  are  bankrupt  in  moral  principle.  Sir,  there 
is  truth  in  the  declaration  of  John  Quincy  Adams,  that  the  "prop- 
agation, preservation,  and  perpetuation  of  slavery  is  the  vital  and 
animating  spirit  of  the  National  Government." 


26  THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION. 

Still,  Southern  gentlemen  read  us  daily  homilies  here  on  the 
encroachments  of  the  North  ;  and  the  threat  of  disunion  is  the 
thunder  with  which,  as  usual,  we  are  to  be  driven  from  our  pur- 
pose, and  frightened  into  uncomplaining  silence.  Mr.  Chairman, 
the  time  has  come  when  representatives  from  the  free  States  should 
speak  plainly.  Shall  a  blind  fear  of  a  dissolution  of  the  Union 
make  us  slaves  ourselves?  The  Federal  Constitution  was  ordained, 
among  other  things,  to  secure  the  blessings  of  liberty.  "  The  hour 
has  come  when  we  are  to  adopt  or  reject  the  degrading  principle, 
that  slavery  and  freedom  are  twin-sisters  of  the  Constitution,  joined 
in  a  Siamese  union,  one  and  inseparable  ;  that  our  fathers  fought 
to  build  up  a  prison-house  and  a  palace  as  the  appropriate  wings  of 
the  temple  of  liberty  ;  that  in  the  flag  they  rallied  under,  the  Stars 
were  for  the  whites,  and  the  Stripes  for  the  blacks  ;  that  the  North 
is  to  have  leave  for  a  virtuous  prosperity  only  by  maintaining  the 
South  in  a  prosperity  dependent  on  oppression  and  crime.''  This 
is  the  question  forced  upon  us  by  the  South,  and  it  must  be  met. 
There  can  be  no  such  thins  as  dodging  it.  If  our  view  of  the 
Constitution  and  its  objects  be  correct,  we  have  rights  under  it 
which  the  South  should  not  withhold  ;  if  her  view  is  the  true  one, 
and  slavery  is  the  great  concern  of  this  nation,  to  be  upheld  and 
fostered  by  all  its  power,  then  we  should  understand  it  at  once. 
Sir,  I  entertain  no  such  opinion  of  the  government  under  which 
we  live.  I  have  shown  that  our  fathers  entertained  no  such  opin- 
ion. We  mean  to  stand  by  the  Constitution  as  they  understood  it. 
We  only  ask  our  constitutional  rights.  We  simply  demand  a 
return  of  the  government  to  its  early  policy  in  relation  to  slavery. 
I  speak  frankly.  I  am  willing  to  submit  to  wrongs  already  in- 
flicted ;  but  if  further  submission  be  exacted  as  the  price  of  the 
Union,  I  would  say  to  our  Southern  friends,  take  the  putrescent 
corpse  of  slavery  into  your  embrace,  and  let  your  contemplated 
Southern  Confederacy  encircle  it  amid  the  hisses  of  the  civilized 
world.  During  the  last  summer  I  told  the  people  I  now  have  the 
honor  to  represent  that  I  would  rather  see  the  breaking  up  of  the 
Union  than  the  extension  of  slavery  into  our  Territories  either  by 
the  action  or  permission  of  the  government.  I  reiterate  that 
declaration  here.  Sir,  this  is  the  proper  forum  on  which  the  South 
should  be  met  in  the  discussion  of  the  question  of  slavery  ;  and  I 
despise  the  skulking  and  cowardly  miscreant  who,  after  having 
obtained  his  seat  on  this  floor  by  his  anti-slavery  pledges,  turns 
politely  to  the  South  and  tells  her  that  "  when  I  want  to  talk 
about  slavery  I  will  go  home  among  my  own  constituents,  where 


THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION.  27 

I  have  the  right  to  speak  upon  it."1  Such  men  have  been  the 
curse  of  the  nation.  Had  Northern  politicians  resisted  the  aggres- 
sions of  the  South,  as  it  was  their  duty  to  do,  in  the  onset,  the 
unhappy  crisis  in  which  the  country  is  now  placed  would  have 
been  averted.  The  great  danger  to  the  Union  has  always  been  in 
the  North.  The  South  has  been  much  given  to  bluster,  which  in 
itself  is  harmless,  but  Northern  men  have  been  frightened  by  it 
into  servility.  Here  lies  the  great  peril  now.  I  have  no  fears 
that  the  South  will  sunder  the  Union,  notwithstanding  the  mad- 
ness of  her  politicians.  The  sober  second  thought  of  her  people, 
underlying  the  froth  of  her  representatives,  will  be  proof  against 
it.  But  let  Northern  men  continue  a  little  longer  to  cower  before 
the  threats  of  slaveholders,  instead  of  meeting  them  with  a  manly 
firmness  ;  let  them  surrender  one  after  another  the  rights  of  the 
free  States,  and  make  merchandise  of  their  honor,  until  our  degra- 
dation can  no  longer  be  concealed  by  the  devices  of  politicians, 
and  the  dissolution  of  the  Union  will  be  inevitable.  The  disease 
in  the  body  politic  will  have  taken  such  deep  root  as  to  be  incur- 
able by  any  other  process.  He  is  not  the  friend,  but  the  real 
enemy  of  the  Union,  who  smilingly  tells  the  slaveholders  that  all 
is  well,  and  raises  the  cry  of  "Peace,  peace,  when  there  is  no 
peace."  Sir,  the  contest  between  slavery  and  freedom  has  ripened. 
To  talk  of  compromise  is  folly.  That  medicine  has  been  tried, 
and  has  proved  worse  than  the  disease  it  was  designed  to  cure.  It 
is  not  within  the  power  of  Congress  to  compromise  the  moral  senti- 
ment of  the  free  States  ;  and  any  attempt  to  do  so  would  only 
madden  and  increase  the  existing  excitement,  and  multiply  obsta- 
cles in  the  way  of  any  pacific  adjustment  of  the  questions  in  dis- 
pute. Between  slavery  and  freedom  there  is  and  can  be  no 
affinity ;  nor  can  all  the  compromises  in  the  world  unite  and  har- 
monize what  God,  by  his  eternal  law,  has  put  asunder. 

Mr.  Chairman,  it  has  become  quite  fashionable  to  denounce  the 
anti-slavery  agitation  of  the  North.  Gentlemen  tell  us  it  is  dis- 
turbing the  peace  of  the  country,  dividing  the  nation  into  "  geo- 
graphical parties,"  and  threatening  to  destroy  the  Union.  Sir,  let 
me  ask  at  whose  door  lies  the  blame  for  all  this?'  What  are  the 
causes  which  have  given  birth  to  this  agitation,  and  these  so-called 
sectional  parties  ?  The  South,  as  I  have  already  shown,  by  the 
help  or  permission  of  the  North,  has  controlled  the  offices  of  the 
government  and  shaped  its  policy  for  the  last  fifty  years.  Through 
her  agency  slavery  has  been  widening  its  power,  and  taking  deeper 
1  An  ex-member  of  Congress. 


28  THE    SLAVERY   QUESTION. 

and  deeper  root  in   the  country  every  hour  of  that  whole   period. 
Instead  of  an  institution  barely  to  be  tolerated  in  a  few  States,  as 
their  own  exclusive  concern,  and   that  for  a  time  only,  it  has  be- 
come nationalized,  and  demands  the  protection  of  this  government 
"  wherever  our  flao-  floats."     It  has  grown  to  be  the  great  interest 
of  the  Union,  and  subordinates  all  other  questions   to  its  unholy 
purposes.     It  has  reversed  the  original  policy  of  the  government, 
disappointed  the  hopes  and  expectations  of  its  founders,  and  to  a 
great  extent  frustrated  the  ends  of  its  formation.     And  when,  after 
long  years  of  unpardonable  forbearance,  a  portion  of  the  Northern 
people   rise  up  and  demand   their  just   rights,  refusing  to  be  the 
absolute   slaves  of  the   South,  they  are  denounced  as  "agitators," 
enemies  of  the   Union,  the  builders    up  of  geographical  parties. 
Sir,  I  meet  these  charges,  and  I  say  to   Southern  gentlemen,  that 
they  have  forced  agitation  upon  us.     It  is  the  only  alternative  left 
us,  unless  we  submit  to  be  bound    by  them  "  in   all   cases  whatso- 
ever."    I  know  it  is  offensive  to   the   South.     I  know  that  distin- 
guished gentlemen  from  that  quarter  have  admitted  that  Northern 
agitation  has  prevented  slavery  from  obtaining  a  foothold  in  Cali- 
fornia.    They  understand    and  dread    its    power.     It  is  for  this 
reason  that  I  would   encourage  it.     Agitation  is  a  necessary  fruit, 
an  inevitable  consequence  of  Southern   aggression   and  Northern 
cowardice  ;  and  slavery  propagandists  and  doughfaces  must  answer 
for  their  own  political  sins.     To  charge  the  friends  of  freedom  in 
the  North  with  kindling  up  strife  in  the  land,  and  thus    endanger- 
ing the  Union,  is  as  unjust  as  to  charge  the  blood  shed  in  our  Revo- 
lution  upon   the  heads  of  those  who   counseled   resistance   to   the 
mother  country.     Am  I  told  that  we  should  not  wound  the  pride 
of  the  South?     Sir,  on  what  occasion  has  she  exhibited  any  great 
tenderness  for  the  pride  of  the  North  ?     She  has  pursued  toward 
us  a  policy  of  systematic  selfishness  from  the  beginning,  uniformly 
disregarding  our  most  cherished  feelings  when   they  have   crossed 
her  path.     When  we  ask  her  respectfully  to  yield  us  our  rights 
under  the  Constitution,  wTe  are  met  with  browbeating  and  threats. 
And  are  the  interests  of  freedom  to  be  jeoparded  over  half  a  con- 
tinent, in  order  to  avoid  wounding  the  pride  of  men  who  thus  treat 
us  ?     Sir,  their  pride  is  not  worth  saving  at  such  a  sacrifice.     It  is 
not  the   pride  of  principle,  of  justice,  but  the   pride  of^mere  arro- 
gance, pampered  into  insolence  by  long  indulgence  ;  and  under  no 
circumstances  would  I  yield  to  it.     The  history  of  the  world  dem- 
onstrates   that  slavery,  regardless  of   soil  or  climate,  has  existed 
wherever  it  has  not  been   interdicted  by  positive   legislation.     It 


THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION.  29 

always  establishes  itself  in  the  first  instance  without  law,  and  then 
suborns  the  law  into  its  support.  Without  the  aid  of  any  legal 
sanction,  it  has  at  one  time  or  another  crept  into  every  portion  of 
the  earth  that  has  yet  been  inhabited.  No  "law  of  physical  geog- 
raphy," no  "  ordinance  of  nature,"  has  been  found  sufficient,  in- 
dependent of  human  enactments,  to  prevent  its  spread  over  the 
globe.  Every  consideration,  therefore,  demands  that  Congress 
should  exclude  it  from  our  Territories.  We  should  thus  imitate  the 
example  of  our  fathers  by  "  reenacting  the  law  of  God,"  and  at 
the  same  time  restore  their  policy  in  relation  to  slavery.  The 
North  sliould  demand  this  as  her  absolute  right,  and  insist  upon  it 
at  whatever  hazard.  Should  the  South  take  offense,  let  her  be 
offended  ;  should  her  pride  be  wounded,  let  her  own  physicians 
heal  it  in  their  own  way ;  sliould  she  see  fit  to  dissolve  the  Union, 
let  her  make  the  attempt,  but  let  the  North  yield  not  a  single  hair's 
breadth  to  the  further  exactions  of  the  slave  power. 

But  suppose,  Mr.  Chairman,  we  resolve  to  compromise  :  I  ask, 
what  are  the  terms  upon  which  alone  the  South  is  willing  to  meet 
us  ?  On  this  subject  we  are  not  left  in  doubt.  We  are  to  allow 
slavery  to  continue  indefinitely  in  the  District  of  Columbia  ;  we 
are  to  abandon  the  Territories  of  the  United  States  to  its  inroads  ; 
we  are  to  engage  actively  in  the  business  of  slave-catching  under 
the  employ  of  our  Southern  masters  ;  and,  finally,  we  must  silence 
the  anti-slavery  agitation,  obeying  their  imperious  mandate,  "Keep- 
your  thoughts  to  yourselves."  This  is  the  very  modest  demand 
of  the  South,  and  we  must  allow  her  to  make  a  compliance  with  it 
a  qualification  for  political  fellowship,  a  test  of  fitness  for  office,  and 
the  only  tie  which  is  hereafter  to  bind  her  to  the  free  States. 
With  Southern  politicians  this  is  the  question  of  questions.  It 
towers  above  every  other  consideration.  Doughfaces  are  found 
only  in  the  Northern  States.  The  Whigs  and  Democrats  of  the 
South,  laying  aside  minor  differences,  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder 
in  the  maintenance  of  their  great  interest.  In  comparison  with  it, 
the  questions  of  bank  and  tariff  are  not  even  respectable  abstrac- 
tions. And  shall  the  North  be  less  loyal  to  freedom  than  the 
South  is  to  slavery?  Have  we  no  paramount  question  ?  Shall  we 
surrender  our  political  birthright  in  a  quarrel  about  comparative 
trifles,  or  a  mere  scramble  for  place  and  power  ?  We  have  the 
strength  to  repel  the  further  aggressions  of  slavery.  Shall  we 
waste  it  by  our  divisions,  instead  of  declaring  in  one  united  voice, 
and  with  an  inflexible  purpose,  "  Thus  far  ;  no  farther  !  "  I  know 
by  experience   something  of  the   power  of  party.     I  know  how 


30  THE    SLAVERY   QUESTION. 

anxious  are  Northern  Whigs  and  Democrats  to  maintain  their 
national  party  organizations,  in  the  discipline  of  which  they  have 
so  long  served.  I  know  how  repugnant  it  is  to  their  feelings, 
when  the  old  questions  between  them  are  rapidly  losing  their  sig- 
nificance, to  have  newT  ones  thrust  upon  them,  threatening  discord 
and  incurable  divisions  in  their  ranks.  But  should  there  be  no 
bounds  to  our  devotion  to  party  ?  Each  of  the  political  organiza- 
tions to  which  I  have  alluded  consists  of  a  Northern  and  Southern 
division,  diametrically  opposed  to  each  other  on  the  question  of 
slavery.  These  divisions  must  be  held  together  by  some  common 
bond  of  union,  and  this  bond  is  subserviency  to  the  slave  interest. 
This  fact  can  no  longer  be  concealed.  The  submission  of  North- 
ern politicians  to  the  behests  of  slavery  is  openly  proclaimed  by 
Southern  gentlemen  as  the  sole  condition  upon  which  existing 
party  associations  can  be  maintained.  Are  we  prepared  for  this 
submission,  to  seal  this  bond  of  union  ?  We  must  either  do  this, 
or  resist  like  men.  The  alternatives  are  presented,  and  there  is 
no  middle  ground.  We  must  choose  our  master;  for  it  is  as 
impossible  to  serve  slavery  and  freedom  at  the  same  time,  as  to 
serve  God  and  Mammon.  We  must  ally  ourselves  to  the  growing 
spirit  of  freedom  in  the  North,  which,  sooner  or  later,  must  be 
heeded,  or  we  must  link  our  political  fortunes  to  the  growing  spirit 
of  slavery  in  the  South,  which,  sooner  or  later,  must  be  borne  down 
by  the  powers  with  which  it  is  at  war.  We  must  organize  our 
parties  in  reference  to  the  increasing  anti-slavery  feeling  of  fifteen 
States  of  the  Union,  and  ten  or  twelve  millions  of  people,  rein- 
forced by  the  sentiment  of  the  civilized  world  ;  or  we  must  turn 
our  backs  upon  the  progress  of  free  principles,  in  order  to  propitiate 
the  smiles  of  an  oligarchy  of  two  or  three  hundred  thousand  slave- 
holders. We  must  sympathize  with  the  spirit  of  liberty,  which  is 
now  swelling  the  heart  of  Christendom,  and  causing  even  despotisms 
to  tremble  ;  or  we  must  hold  no  communion  with  that  spirit,  and 
spurn  it  from  our  thoughts,  lest  the  dealers  in  human  flesh  should 
be  offended,  and  refuse  to  aid  us  in  the  prosecution  of  our  partisan 
schemes.  Such,  I  repeat,  are  the  alternatives  to  which  our  slave- 
holding  brethren  have  invited  our  attention.  For  one,  I  am  ready 
to  choose  between  them.  I  will  enter  into  no  "  covenant  with 
death."  I  will  agree  to  no  truce  with  slaveholders  so  long  as  thev 
insist  upon  their  unholy  exactions.  I  will  form  no  alliance  with 
men  who  foreordain  my  submission  to  their  will  as  the  tenure  of 
their  friendship.  And  the  party,  in  my  judgment,  that  shall  now 
seek  to  maintain  its  unity  by  yielding  to  these  demands  of  slavery, 


THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION.  31 

will  dig  for  itself  a  political  grave  from  which  there  will  be  no 
resurrection.  It  may  survive  for  a  time  ;  it  may  achieve  a  tem- 
porary triumph  over  its  adversary;  but  it  will  array  itself  in  hostil- 
ity to  the  rights  of  man,  sacrifice  its  integrity  and  moral  influence, 
and  thus  perish  by  its  own  suicidal  hand.  Sir,  I  can  acknowledge 
no  allegiance  to  any  such  party.  Its  conventions  and  caucus 
arrangements  have  no  power  over  my  action.  Not  servility  to  the 
South,  but  uncompromising  resistance  to  her  further  encroach- 
ments, must  determine  my  party  associations.  This,  I  have  already 
said,  is  the  paramount  question,  upon  which  all  the  parties  of  the 
North  should  band  themselves  together  as  one  man.  Most  of  the 
questions  which  have  heretofore  divided  the  American  people  have 
been  settled.  Is  there  any  issue  now  on  the  subject  of  a  United 
States  Bank  ?  Experience  has  shown  that  this  nation  can  prosper 
without  such  an  institution.  It  is  not  demanded  by  the  voice  of 
the  people  nor  the  exigencies  of  the  government.  Years  ago,  it 
was  declared  by  the  highest  Whig  authority  to  be  an  "  obsolete 
idea."  .Is  there  any  issue  as  to  distributing  the  proceeds  of  the 
public  lands  ?  It  has  been  swept  away  by  the  tide  of  political 
events,  and  the  beneficent  doctrine  of  land  reform  is  destined,  I 
trust,  at  some  time  not  far  in  the  future,  to  receive  the  sanction  of 
Congress.  Is  there  any  real  question  at  present  respecting  a  pro- 
tective tariff?  Some  faint  efforts  are  being  made  to  galvanize  this 
question  into  life,  and  drag  it  from  the  grave  into  which  it  is  sink- 
ing ;  but  these  efforts  will  be  fruitless.  I  have  no  belief  that  this 
government  will  return  to  the  old-fashioned  Whig  policy  of  high 
protective  duties.  The  spirit  of  the  age,  and  the  policy  of  the 
leading  nations  of  the  earth,  are  tending  more  and  more  in  the 
direction  of  free  trade  ;  whilst  the  restrictive  systems  of  the  past 
are  perishing  from  the  same  causes  that  have  originated  and  are 
carrying  forward  other  reforms.  The  philanthropy  which  is  elevat- 
ing the  condition  of  the  toiling  million,  mitigating  the  rigors  of 
penal  law,  and  breaking  the  chains  of  the  slave,  is  at  the  same  time 
removing  the  shackles  from  the  commerce  of  the  world.  It  is  not 
protection  to  capital,  but  protection  to  man's  rights,  protection  to 
the  hand  that  labors,  that  should  invoke  the  action  of  the  govern- 
ment. It  is  not  protection  to  American  manufactures,  but  protec- 
tion to  American  men,  that  I  would  now  advocate ;  and,  like  the 
founders  of  the  government,  I  would  make  it  the  starting  point  in 
politics,  the  great  central  truth  in  my  political  creed,  to  which 
questions  of  mere  policy  should  be  subordinate. 

"  Is  the  dollar  only  real  ?     God,  and  truth,  and  right,  a  dream  ? 
Weighed  against  your  lying  ledgers,  must  our  manhood  kick  the  beam  ?  " 


32  THE   SLAVERY   QUESTION. 

Must  we  blink  humanity  itself  in  our  loyalty  to  "  regular  nomina- 
tions," or  our  devotion  or  opposition  to  measures  of  policy  that  are 
dead  and  buried  ?  The  Northern  States  have  declared  that  Con- 
gress should  prevent  the  introduction  of  slavery  into  the  Territories 
of  the  government.  The  Southern  States  declare  that  this  shall 
not  be  done.  It  is  a  contest  between  the  two  sections  of  the  Union, 
as  to  whether  slavery  or  freedom  shall  establish  her  altars  in  those 
Territories.  It  is  a  contest  between  liberty  and  despotism.  It  is  not 
a  quarrel  about  "  goat's  wool,"  or  a  mere  punctilio,  but  a  struggle 
in  which  great  interests  and  great  principles  are  at  stake  ;  a  strug- 
gle, the  issue  of  which  is  to  determine  the  weal  or  woe  of  millions, 
and  addresses  itself  not  to  the  judgments  only,  but  to  the  con- 
sciences of  Northern  men.  The  Free  Soil  men  in  Congress  desire 
the  application  of  the  ordinance  of  Jefferson,  come  what  ma}r.  in 
order  to  maintain  their  faithfulness  to  this  principle,  they  have 
sundered  their  party  allegiance,  and  for  this  cause  they  are  branded 
as  "  fanatics,"  and  denounced  as  traitors.  The  vocabulary  of  our 
language  is  ransacked  for  words  strong  enough  to  express  their 
baseness  and  infamy  as  a  party,  and  their  depravity  and  reckless- 
ness as  men.  The  gentleman  from  Tennessee  [Mr.  Savage], 
who  addressed  the  committee  on  yesterday,  has  already  consigned 
them  to  their  fate,  among  the  outcasts  and  offscouring  of  the 
earth.  The  gentleman  from  Maryland  [Mr.  McLane]  is  so 
brimful  of  wrath  at  their  iniquities,  that  he  styles  them  "  a  pesti- 
lent set  of  vipers,  that  ought  in  God's  name  to  be  destroyed."  Sir, 
it  might  be  well  for  the  honorable  gentleman  to  try  that  experi- 
ment. I  have  yet  to  learn  that  Free  Soil  men  have  not  the  same 
rights  in  this  country  and  on  this  floor  as  slave  soil  men.  I  have 
vet  to  learn  that  the  doctrine  of  slavery  restriction,  which  was  a 
virtue  in  our  fathers  in  1787,  is  a  crime  in  their  descendants,  which 
should  doom  them  to  destruction  ;  and  I  have  yet  to  learn  that  the 
masses  in  the  free  States  are  not  in  favor  of  that  doctrine,  and  will 
not.  stand  by  it  and  its  advocates  to  the  last  hour. 

Mr.  Chairman,  it  was  my  fortune  last  year,  in  the  congressional 
district  I  have  the  honor  to  represent,  to  witness  an  effort  to  anni- 
hilate these  "  vipers,"  so  heartily  detested  by  the  gentleman  from 
Mainland.  I  would  say  to  him,  too,  that  the  project  was  not  set 
on  foot  by  Democrats,  but  by  Taylor  Whig  managers.  What  was 
the  result  of  this  experiment  ?  Sir,  the  Democrats  made  common 
cause  with  the  Free  Soil  party,  adopted  the  ordinance  of  Jefferson 
as  a  part  of  their  platform,  and  thus  achieved  a  triumph  over  their 
foe.     And  judging  from  such  indications   as  1  have  seen  of  their 


THE    SLAVERY   QUESTION.  33 

present  opinions  and  purposes,  these  Democrats  have  not  receded, 
and  are  not  likely  to  recede,  from   the  principles  which  they  in- 
dorsed a  year  ago  in  their  county  conventions,  and  by  their  political 
action  ;  whilst  the  organs  of  the  Whig  party  in  that  same  district 
are  now  discoursing  sweet  music  to  the   tune  of  non-intervention. 
In  1848  these  Whig  leaders  were  for  the  Proviso  against  the  world. 
It  was  their  undoubted  thunder,  which  the   Free   Soil  men  were 
feloniously  endeavoring  to  purloin  from  them.     They  declared  the 
Whigs  to  be  the  only  true   anti-slavery  party.     They  denounced 
General  Cass  as  a  heartless  and  unmitigated  doughface,  for  writing 
his  non-intervention  Nicholson  Letter.     Multitudes  voted  for  Gen 
eral  Taylor  without  pretending  that  he  was  in  favor  of  Free  Soil, 
but  merely  to  crush,  the   non-intervention   heresy,  and  "  to   beat 
Cass,"  who  now  seems,  after  all,  in  a  fair  way  to  be  canonized  as  a 
political  saint  by  these  same  anti-slavery  Whig  leaders.    Sir,  instead 
of  annihilating  the  Free  Soil  party,  they  have  been  unconsciously 
playing  their  own  game  upon  themselves.     The  rank  and  file  of 
their  party,  I  trust,  will  not  follow  them  into   the   mire  of  "  non- 
intervention by  non-action  "   with  slavery  in  the  Territories.     I 
trust  that  the  great  body  of  the  people  of  all  parties  in  that  district 
will  stand  firmly  upon  the  platform  of  freedom,  swerving  neither 
to  the  right  nor  the  left,  favoring  no  further  concessions  to  slavery, 
and  frowning  upon  the  Northern  recreant  who  shall  be  found  doing 
battle  for  slaveholders  against  his  own  section  of  the  Union. 

But  however  this  may  be,  my  own  course  is  clear.  I  shall  take 
no  backward  step.  I  have  thrown  my  fortunes  into  the  scale  of 
freedom,  and  I  am  willing  to  abide  the  issue.  Holding  the  views 
I  have  honestly  embraced,  reared  as  I  have  been  in  a  free  State, 
and  representing  as  I  do  a  constituency  of  freemen,  I  trust  there 
is  no  earthly  temptation  that  could  seduce  me  from  the  cause  I 
have  espoused.  And  that  cause,  whatever  may  for  the  time  betide 
it  or  its  votaries,  will  as  certainly  triumph  as  that  truth  is  omnipo- 
tent, or  that  God  governs  the  world. 


"THE   HEALING   MEASURES." 

IN  COMMITTEE  OF  THE   WHOLE   ON  THE   ARMY  APPROPRIATION   BILL, 
SEPTEMBER  25,  1850. 

[Of  "The  Healing  Measures"  of  1850  (as  the}' were  then  called),  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Bill  was  by  far  the  most  infamous.  On  the  12th  of  September  it  was  reached 
on  the  Speaker's  table,  and  on  motion  of  Mr.  Thompson,  of  Pennsylvania,  the  previous 
question  was  seconded  on  its  passage ;  and  thus,  without  reference  to  any  committee, 
without  even  being  printed,  and  with  no  opportunity  whatever  for  debate,  it. was 
passed.  These  circumstances  called  forth  several  speeches  indignantly  denouncing  this 
and  the  other  compromise  measures,  and  predicting  their  utter  failure  to  restore  peace 
to  the  country.     This  speech  is  a  specimen.] 

Mr.  Chairman,  —  Not  having  been  able  to  obtain  the  floor  at  a 
more  opportune  period,  I  desire  to  submit  a  few  observations  upon 
the  "healing  measures"  which  have  finally  been  carried  through 
Congress.  It  is  with  unfeigned  reluctance  that  I  enfjaw  in  any 
general  discussion  at  this  late  hour  in  the  session,  and  in  the  face 
of  so  manifest  an  anxiety  to  proceed  without  delay  in  completing 
the  business  which  yet  demands  our  attention  ;  but  when  I  con- 
sider the  free  use  which  has  been  made  of  the  gag,  in  hurrying 
through  this  body  some  of  the  most  important  measures  of  the  ses- 
sion, without  any  opportunity  whatever  for  debate,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  parliamentary  adroitness  by  which  the  opponents  of  those 
measures  have  been  vanquished,  I  feel  in  a  measure  justified  in 
any  use  which  I  may  see  fit  to  make,  under  the  rules  provided  for 
our  government,  of  the  hour  to  which  I  am  entitled. 

Before  the  passage  of  the  Texas  Boundary  Bill,  the  assertion  was 
.ao-ain  and  again  made,  that  those  who  should  vote  against  it  would 
vote  for  civil  war.  It  was  so  declared  by  the  leading  organ  of  the 
Executive  in  this  city.  Gentlemen  in  the  support  of  the  Adminis- 
tration, and  those  opposing  it  on  other  questions,  united  in  this  dec- 
laration. It  went  out  through  the  country  on  the  wings  of  the 
public  press,  and  was  echoed  back  to  the  Capitol  with  the  obvious 
purpose  of  strengthening  the  hands  of  those  who  could  find  no  other 
reason  for  giving  the  measure  their  support.  Since  the  passage  of 
the  bill  the  charge  has  been  repeatedly  made,  that  those  who  voted 
against  it  did  vote  for  civil  Avar,  and  the  country  has  been  warned 
to  hold  them  to  a  solemn  accountability  for  the  recklessness  of  their 


"THE   HEALING   MEASURES."  35 

course.  Now,  sir,  I  desire  to  state  the  grounds  on  which  I  felt  it 
my  duty  to  oppose  that  measure.  I  certainly  do  not  feel  called 
upon  to  defend  myself  against  the  senseless  accusation  to  which  I 
allude,  nor  do  [  intend  that  those  who  make  it  shall  place  me  in 
that  attitude.  I  choose  rather  to  be  aggressive.  I  mean  to  assail 
this  monstrous  project,  by  which  the  rights  of  the  free  States  have 
been  sacrificed  through  the  treachery  of  their  representatives  ;  and 
I  can  best  accomplish  this  purpose  by  referring,  in  the  first  place,  to 
the  reasons  which  governed  my  own  action. 

I  hold  that,  by  the  bill  under  consideration,  we    surrender  to 
Texas  nearly  one  hundred  thousand  square  miles  of  territory,  to 
which  she  has  no  more  right  than  I  have  to  the  property  of  my 
neighbor.     Her  want  of  title  I  regard  as  "  clear  and  unquestion- 
able."    I  do  not  mean  at  this  time  to  enter  upon  the  discussion  of 
the  question,  and  I  am  fully  aware  of  the  wide  differences  of  opin- 
ion which  prevail  in  regard  to  it.     I  only  state  my  own  judgment, 
deliberately  formed,  after  the  best  examination  I  have  been  able  to 
give  the  subject.     In  addition  to  this  large  gift  of  territory,  the  bill 
obliges  us  to  pay  Texas  ten  millions  of  money,  to  which  she  has  no 
better  claim,  as  I  conceive,  than  she  has  to  the  land.     All  this  we 
yield  to  her,  without  any  right  on   her  part  to  demand  it,  or  any 
merit  in  virtue  of  which  she  can  claim  it  as  a  favor  at  the  hands  of 
the  United  States.      The  territory  which  she  surrenders,  and  for 
which  we  pay  her  these  ten  millions,  is  situated  about  five  hundred 
miles  from  the  settled  portions  of  the  State,  and  is  separated  from 
them  by  vast  wastes  of  uninhabitable  and  sterile  country.      There 
is  no  part  of  it  of  any  value  which   is  not  already  taken  up  by  the 
old  grants  of  the  Spanish  Government,  and  the  vacant  lands  are 
not  worth    even   the  expense   of  surveying    them.     Besides,    the 
country  -is  inhabited  exclusively  by  Indians,  Mexicans,  and  adven- 
turers from  other  States,  all  of  whom  are  aliens  to  Texas  in  feelinc, 
and  strangers  to  her  jurisdiction.      Such  are  the  admitted  facts,  as 
given  by  a  leading  journal  of  the  State.     But  I  have  not  presented 
the  worst  feature  in  the  bill.     This  large  surrender  of  land  and 
money,  in  itself  considered,  is  not  necessarily  criminal.     The  nation 
is  rich,  and  it  may  bestow  its  treasures  without  incurring  any  par- 
ticular guilt,  except  that  of  folly  or  prodigality.     What  I  chiefly 
complain  of  is,  that  the  land  given  to  Texas  by  this   bill  is  trans- 
formed from  free  territory  into  the  soil  of  a  slaveholding  State.     It 
is  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  extension  of  slavery  by  an  act  of 
Congress.      When  the  friends  of  the  measure  asked  me  to  support 
it,  they  asked  me  to  aid  by  my  vote  in  spreading  this  vile  system 


36  "THE   HEALING  MEASURES." 

over  these  millions  of  free  acres,  thus  dooming  botli  the  white  and 
black  race  who  may  people  them,  perhaps  for  ages  to  come,  to  the 
innumerable  woes  which  follow  in  its  train.  Mr.  Chairman,  not 
for  all  the  land  which  this  nation  has  acquired  from  Mexico  by  the 
sword  of  conquest,  with  all  its  glittering  gold  included  ;  not  for  all 
the  offices  and  honors  with  which  this  government  has  the  power 
to  reward  a  traitor  to  freedom,  would  I  steep  my  conscience  in  the 
guilt,  the  infamy,  of  planting  on  free  soil  this  hell-born  traffic  in 
the  bodies  and  souls  of  men,  or  call  down  upon  me  the  blistering 
curses  of  my  constituents,  by  so  base  and  ignominious  a  betrayal  of 
the  trust  which  they  have  committed  to  my  hands.  No  threat  of 
civil  war,  no  dread  of  consequences,  no  cowardly  alarm  aroused  by 
the  studied  bluster  of  Texan  slaveholders,  could  induce  me  thus 
to  join  hands  with  the  oppressor,  and  wage  war  upon  humanity 
itself. 

But  the  bill  has  passed.  Had  there  been  votes  enough  to  defeat 
it,  it  is  possible  that  civil  war  would  have  followed,  though  I  think 
it  in  the  highest  degree  improbable.  It  is  likewise  possible  that 
such  a  war  might  have  produced  consequences  fatal  to  the  perpet- 
uity of  this  Union.  For  aught  I  know,  the  passage  of  the  bill  may 
be  attended  with  the  same  ultimate  results.  I  cannot  pretend  to 
decide  such  questions  with  certainty,  because  Providence  has  not 
vouchsafed  to  me  the  gift  of  foreknowledge.  The  question  of  duty, 
and  the  consequences  resulting  from  its  performance,  are  often  en- 
tirely distinct;  the  former  maybe  perfectly  clear,  whilst  the  latter 
may  be  impalpable  or  unknown.  But  the  moral  sense  of  every 
man,  if  not  perverted,  will  tell  him  plainly  that  slavery  is  an  out- 
rage upon  humanity,  and  a  crime  against  God ;  and  that  he  cannot 
justify  himself  in  fastening  it  upon  his  fellow-men,  in  the  hope  of 
thereby  averting  a  greater  evil.  It  is  true  that  in  obscure  or 
doubtful  cases  we  may  sometimes  consider  the  supposed  conse- 
quences of  an  act  in  determining  upon  its  performance  ;  but  we 
are  never  justified  in  perpetrating  a  deed  that  is  palpably  wicked, 
on  the  pretense  that  the  end  we  design  to  accomplish  will  sanctify 
the  means  we  employ.  I  have  sufficient  faith  in  the  moral  govern- 
ment of  the  world  to  believe  that  no  right  act  is  ever  unattended, 
sooner  or  later,  with  an  appropriate  result  ;  whilst  every  wrong 
deed  carries  with  it  its  own  unfailing  retribution.  To  act  upon 
any  other  principle  is  practical  atheism. 

Mr.  Chairman,  I  deprecate  war  as  much  as  any  gentleman  on 
this  floor.  I  claim  to  be  an  humble  advocate  of  the  great  peace 
movement  of  the  age.     I  stand  opposed  to  the  war  spirit  and  the 


"THE   HEALING  MEASURES."  37 

war  mania  in  all  their  popular  manifestations,  and  quite  as  decid- 
edly, I  trust,  as  any  friend  of  the  Texas  Boundary  Bill.  And  yet 
I  will  not  deny  that  I  think  war  sometimes  necessary.  I  must  say, 
too,  that  I  believe  there  are  things  more  to  be  dreaded.  The  be- 
trayal of  sacred  trusts  is  worse  than  war  ;  shrinking  from  a  just 
responsibility,  when  necessaiy  to  encounter  it,  is  worse  than  war  ; 
the  extension  of  slavery  by  the  Federal  Government,  and  with 
the  approval  of  the  nation,  I  would  pronounce  worse  than  war;  and, 
to  be  more  specific,  war  is  less  to  be  deplored  than  the  dastardly 
and  craven  spirit  which  would  prompt  the  representatives  of  twenty 
millions  of  people  to  cower  and  turn  pale  at  the  bandit  threats  of 
Texan  slaveholders,  and  give  them  millions  of  acres  and  millions  of 
gold  as  a  peace-offering  to  the  vandal  spirit  of  slave  holding  aggres- 
sion. Sir,  I  can  conceive  of  nothing  more  pitiably  abject  and 
humiliating  than  this.  Why,  who  are  these  Texans  who  lately 
told  this  government  that  the  time  for  argument  had  passed,  and 
dictated  to  the  United  States  the  terms  upon  which  their  disputed 
boundary  should  be  settled,  under  a  menace  of  war  ?  Have  North- 
ern gentlemen  forgotten  their  history  ?  Texas  was  torn  from  the 
Mexican  confederacy  by  citizens  of  the  United  States,  who,  in 
violation  of  their  allegiance  to  their  own  country,  raised  the  stand- 
ard of  revolt  against  Mexican  authority  to  which  they  had  volun- 
tarily become  subject.  They  found  it  a  free  province,  but  subjected 
it  to  the  curse  of  American  slavery  ;  and  this  was  one  of  the  main 
purposes  of  its  settlement  and  conquest  by  our  citizens.  The  Gov- 
ernment of  the  United  States,  moved  and  instigated  by  the  same 
unholy  lust  for  slavery,  finally  sought  to  sanctify  this  "  robbery  of 
a  realm  "  by  incorporating  it  into  the  Union.  Annexation  was 
the  primary  cause  of  the  war  with  Mexico,  whilst  its  immediate 
cause  related  to  the  very  question  of  boundary  which  Congress  has 
been  laboring  to  adjust.  Texas,  by  means  of  this  war,  has  cost 
this  government  more  than  one  hundred  millions  of  money. 

These  are  the  prominent  facts  of  her  history ;  and  yet  we  are 
now  called  on  to  give  her  ten  millions  of  dollars  besides,  and  an 
immense  territorj'  to  which  she  had  not  even  the  shadow  of  a  title 
at  the  beginning  of  the  contest  with  Mexico,  because  she  threatens 
us  with  her  military  power  if  we  refuse  to  yield  to  her  insolent  de- 
mands. Yes,  Texas  threatens  !  With  a  voting  population  of  only 
about  thirty  thousand,  bankrupt  in  the  means  of  raising  a  military 
force,  or  even  paying  her  just  debts,  unable  to  protect  herself 
against  the  savage  tribes  that  infest  her  borders,  and  begging  the 
United  States  to  send  a  force  to  her  rescue,  she  yet  threatens  to 


38  "THE   HEALING  MEASURES." 

raise  an  army  and  maintain  it  against  the  National  Government ! 
Can  anything  be  more  preposterous?  And  yet  I  am  charged  with 
voting  for  civil  war,  because,  under  such  circumstances,  I  am  not 
willing  to  surrender  to  Texas  the  unquestionable  rights  of  this 
government,  for  the  purpose  of  buying  her  friendship. 

Sir,  the  time  will  come,  and  I  believe  it  draws  nigh  already, 
when  the  country  will  pronounce  a  just  verdict  upon  those  men 
who  deny  to  Texas  the  right  to  a  single  dollar  of  the  money,  or  a 
single  foot  of  the  land  we  have  given  her,  and  yet  supported  this 
bill,  "  with  all  its  provisions,  to  the  fullest  extent,"  on  the  cowardly 
pretext  of  averting  the  calamities  of  wTar.  I  have  no  censure  to 
cast  upon  those,  if  there  be  any  such,  who  voted  for  the  bill  in  the 
honest  belief  that  Texas  owned  the  whole  of  the  disputed  territory 
up  to  the  Rio  Grande,  and  that  the  money  we  have  given  her  is 
a  fair  compensation  for  the  surrender  she  has  made.  They  acted 
in  accordance  with  their  judgment.  But  I  despise  the  driveling, 
servile,  mean-spirited  policy  which  proclaims  in  one  breath  that 
Texas  is  without  the  semblance  of  a  right  to  the  territory  for  which 
she  threatens  us  with  war,  thereby  putting  her  in  the  attitude  of 
the  robber  seeking  to  despoil  us  by  force  of  property  which  does 
not  belong  to  her,  and  in  the  next  breath  declares,  that  sooner  than 
encounter  her  freebooting  governor  and  his  gang,  the  United  States 
will  cram  their  pockets  with  gold,  and  surrender  to  slaveholding 
rapacitv  fully  one  half  of  our  possessions  lying  on  the  east  side  of 
the  Rio  Grande. 

It  is  not  alone  to  the  cowardice  of  such  a  policy  that  I  object. 
Courage,  considered  apart  from  other  qualities,  stands  the  lowest 
on  the  list  of  virtues,  if  indeed  it  be  a  virtue.  It  is  often  found  in 
alliance  with  the  worst  passions.  In  most  men  it  pertains  rather 
to  the  organization  of  the  body  than  to  the  character.  The  high- 
wayman and  the  pirate  often  possess  it  in  the  highest  degree.  No 
evidence  of  character  is  more  equivocal  than  that  of  mere  physical 
courage  ;  and  therefore  I  will  not  pronounce  any  har&h  judgment 
upon  those  who  have  quailed  before  the  military  power  of  Texas. 
Their  alarm  is  doubtless  the  result  of  a  constitutional  infirmity 
over  which  they  have  no  control ;  but  I  cannot  justify  this  dread 
of  Texan  powder  when  I  see  it  conjoined  to  what  seems  to  me 
moral  cowardice,  in  the  support  of  a  measure  which  curses  with  the 
blight  of  slavery  soil  enough  for  two  States  larger  than  that  of  In- 
diana. Sir,  I  asperse  no  man's  motives,  and  I  impeach  no  man's 
patriotism  ;  but  when  gentlemen  charge  me  with  voting  for  civil 
war,  I  point  them,  and  I  point  the  country,  to  the  vile  panacea  by 


"THE   HEALING  MEASURES."  39 

which  they  have  sought  to  avert  it ;  and  I  ask  the  people  to  judge 
whether  the  danger  of  a  war  with  Texas  was  so  imminent,  or  the 
mischiefs  to  be  apprehended  from  it  so  incalculable,  as  to  justify  the 
monstrous  remedy  which  has  been  resorted  to  by  Congress?  I  am 
ready  to  meet  the  responsibility  involved  in  the  votes  I  have  given, 
and  to  abide  by  the  judgment  which  the  country  may  pronounce 
upon  the  miserable  and  flimsy  plea,  that  the  peace  of  the  country 
demanded  of  Northern  representatives  the  sacrifices  they  have 
made.  Sir,  had  we  passed  a  law  giving  to  Texas  only  one  half  the 
land  and  money  she  has  received,  she  would  have  accepted  it  with 
gladness.  It  is  folly,  it  is  madness,  to  suppose  that  that  State,  fee- 
ble, bankrupt,  powerless,  as  she  is,  would  have  undertaken  to  force 
the  National  Government  into  submission.  Had  she  done  so,  the 
Constitution  defines  the  punishment  of  treason  ;  and  it  would  be 
equal  folly  to  suppose  that  the  federal  arm  would  not  have  been 
strong  enough  to  maintain  the  supremacy  of  the  laws  of  the  Union 
against  the  arrant  project  of  Texan  nullification.  The  peace  of  the 
country  is  scarcely  worth  maintaining,  if  civil  war,  clothed  in  all 
the  horrors  with  which  it  has  been  contemplated,  could  arise  from 
any  such  cause,  and  spread  itself  over  these  States.  I  will  only 
add,  that  these  views  are  corroborated  by  the  recent  action  of 
Texas  herself,  her  Legislature  having  indefinitely  postponed  the 
warlike  gasconade  of  Governor  Bell. 

Mr.  Chairman,  the  territorial  bills  for  the  government  of  New 
Mexico  and  Utah  contain  no  prohibition  against  the  introduction 
of  slavery  ;  on  the  contrary,  they  seem  to  imply  its  legality  in  those 
territories,  by  the  clause  providing  for  the  admission  of  additional 
slaveholding  States.  I  beg  the  indulgence  of  the  committee  in  a 
few  observations  which  I  desire  to  offer  upon  this  subject. 

On  another  occasion  I  have  shown  that  the  founders  of  the  gov- 
ernment  had  no  expectation  that  the  boundaries  of  the  United 
States,  as  established  by  the  Treaty  of  1788,  would  ever  be  enlarged  ; 
that  they  interdicted  the  establishment  of  slavery  in  all  the  territory 
belonging  to  the  government  at  the  time  of  its  formation  ;  that 
slavery,  even  in  the  States  in  which  it  then  existed,  was  rapidly 
dwindling  under  the  weight  of  its  acknowledged  evils  :  that  both 
the  statesmen  and  the  people  of  that  clay,  instead  of  looking  for- 
ward to  its  diffusion  over  new  regions,  confident!}'  expected  it  to  be 
swept  from  the  country  at  no  very  distant  period  ;  and  finally,  that 
the  compromises  on  the  subject  of  slavery  to  wdiich  the  Northern 
States  assented,  were  formed  in  reference  to  these  facts,  and  must 
be  interpreted  in  the  light  which  they  reflect  upon  our  path  from 


40  "THE  HEALING  MEASURES." 

that  early  period.  These  facts  entered  into,  and  formed  a  part  of, 
the  understanding  and  agreement  between  the  Northern  and  South- 
ern  States,  as  embodied  in  the  Federal  Constitution.  I  do  not 
mean  to  enlarge  upon  them  now,  vindicated  as  they  are  by  the 
truth  of  history  ;  but  I  reiterate  them  here,  as  worthy  of  the  consid- 
eration of  those  who  seem  bent  on  a  total  disregard  of  the  principles 
and  policy  of  the  government  at  its  beginning.  Sir,  the  doctrine 
of  "  No  more  slave  States,  and  no  slave  territory,"  was  the  doc- 
trine of  the  founders  of  the  Republic.  The  clause  on  the  subject 
of  slave  representation,  was  only  applicable  to  slavery  in  the  then 
slaveholding  States  ;  and  even  there  it  was  not  undei'stood  as  a  per- 
petual, but  a  temporary  covenant.  Yet  now,  after  the  government 
for  the  last  fifty  years  has  been  drifting  from  its  early  landmarks, 
and  violating  the  faith  upon  which  the  federal  compact  was  formed, 
we  not  only  repudiate  the  Jeffersonian  policy  of  excluding  slavery 
from  our  Territories,  but,  in  framing  governments  for  them,  we  ex- 
pressly stipulate  that  slaveholding  States  may  be  formed  out  of 
them  and  admitted  into  the  Union  if  they  shall  demand  it.  We 
not  only  abandon  the  faith  of  our  fathers,  but  we  seem  anxious  to 
make  our  apostasy  manifest,  that  all  the  world  may  behold  it.  So 
long  has  the  slave  power  guided  the  ship  of  State,  that  we  are  de- 
termined that  freedom  shall  either  silently  submit  to  its  pilotage  or 
be  cast  into  the  sea.  What  was  politically  orthodox  in  1787,  ac- 
cording to  the  authority  of  "  the  Fathers,"  is  the  rankest  heresy 
in  1850. 

My  honorable  colleague  [Mr.  Gorman]  argued  the  other  day 
that  to  insist  on  the  prohibition  of  slavery  in  New  Mexico  and 
Utah  by  act  of  Congress,  is  to  deny  the  capacity  of  the  people  for 
self-government.  He  says  his  motto  is,  to  "  trust  the  people  with 
political  power ; "  that  he  wants  the  "  free-soil  abolition  agitators  " 
either  to  "  affirm  or  deny  the  capacity  of  the  people  for  self-govern- 
ment ; "  and  he  declares  that  "  there  is  no  other  issue  in  the  whole 
principle  of  the  Wilmot  Proviso  but  this  one."  Sir,  I  am  willing 
to  go  before  the  country  on  the  issue  which  he  tenders.  I  am  for 
"  trusting  the  people  "  of  those  territories  with  the  general  right 
to  establish  their  own  municipal  regulations  ;  but  I  am  not  willing 
that  one  portion  of  them  shall  strip  another  portion  of  their  human- 
ity by  converting  them  into  beasts  of  burden  and  articles  of  mer- 
chandise. That  is  not  the  sort  of  Democracy  I  believe  in.  I  have 
no  faith  in  any  such  "  self-government."  I  am  not  willing  to 
"  trust  the  people  "  of  our  Territories  "  with  political  power  "  for 
any  such  purpose,  and  neither  do  thev  demand  it  at  the  hands  of 


"THE   HEALING  MEASURES."  41 

Congress.  It  was  not  the  right  of  a  people  to  make  slaves  of  each 
other,  but  the  denial  of  this  right,  in  defense  of  which  the  War  of 
our  Revolution  was  waged.  If,  besides  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, there  is  one  thing  in  the  public  career  of  Mr.  Jefferson 
which  above  all  others  adds  lustre  to  his  character  and  gives  immor- 
tality to  his  fame,  it  is  his  paternity  of  the  celebrated  ordinance  by 
which  that  institution  branded  by  Wesley  as  "  the  sum  of  all  vil- 
lainies," was,  forever  excluded  from  the  territory  northwest  of  the 
Ohio.  He  was  unwilling  to  "  trust  the  people  "  of  that  region  with 
the  power  to  fasten  upon  it  so  unmitigated  a  curse,  and  posterity 
has  already  vindicated  his  wisdom.  Millions  will  hereafter  rise  up 
and  call  him  blessed  for  the  very  deed  which,  according  to  my  col- 
league, was  equivalent  to  a  denial  of  the  capacity  of  the  people  to 
govern  themselves.  Sir,  gentlemen  may  denounce  the  Wilmot 
Proviso,  and  stigmatize  its  advocates  as  the  enemies  of  popular  sov- 
ereignty ;  but  with  the  democracy  of  Jefferson  and  the  patriots  of 
1787  to  sustain  me,  I  am  willing  to  "  trust  the  people  "  to  decide 
between  us. 

My  honorable  colleague  has  discovered  that  the  Wilmot  Proviso 
was  "  conceived  in  sin  and  brought  forth  in  iniquity."  Does  he 
understand  the  import  of  the  term  ?  Does  he  not  know  that  it 
means  simply  the  right  of  a  whole  people,  whether  of  a  State  or 
Territory,  to  the  common  blessing  of  freedom  ?  In  its  application 
to  our  Territories,  the  Wilmot  Proviso  is  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence embodied  in  a  fundamental  law  for  their  government. 
Our  fathers  declared  that  "  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happi- 
ness," are  among  the  inalienable  rights  of  men,  and  that  "  govern- 
ments are  instituted  to  (secure  these  rights,  deriving  their  just  pow- 
ers from  the  consent  of  the  governed."  Make  these  truths  opera- 
tive in  the  Territories  of  the  government,  by  the  competent  law- 
making power,  and  you  have  the  Wilmot  Proviso,  call  it  by  what- 
ever name  you  choose.  Instead  of  being  "  conceived  in  sin  and 
brought  forth  in  iniquity,"  it  was  conceived  in  the  brains  of  such 
patriots  as  Sir  Harry  Vane  and  Algernon  Sydney,  in  the  time  of  the 
English  Commonwealth,  and  finally  "brought  forth"  in  the  glorious 
fruits  of  our  own  Revolution  in  177b\  It  is  the  very  life-blood  of 
our  freedom  ;  and  although  for  the  present  its  friends  are  overpow- 
ered, they  should  stand  by  it,  and  maintain  it,  so  long  as  they  retain 
their  faith  in  the  rights  of  man  and  the  duty  of  government  to  pro- 
vide guards  for  their  security.  And  I  desire  to  say,  too,  that  did 
I  feel  as  confident  as  some  gentlemen  profess  to  feel,  that  slavery, 
in  any  event,  will  not  obtain  a  foothold  in  our  Territories,  I  would 


42  "THE   HEALING  MEASURES." 

still  insist  on  the  Proviso,  as  a  wholesome  and  needful  reassertion, 
in  the  present  crisis,  of  the  principles  on  which  the  government  was 
founded  and  was  designed  to  be  administered,  — as  a  means  of  re- 
storing  it  to  its  early  policy,  and  animating  it  anew  with  the  breath 
of  freedom  which  bore  our  fathers  through  their  conflict,  and  made 
us  an  independent  nation.  It  is  peculiarly  an  American  principle, 
and  devotion  to  it  should  be  as  honorable  to  an  American  citizen 
as  his  abandonment  of  it  should  be  disgraceful.  And  if  there  is  one 
circumstance  connected  with  my  humble  service  in  the  present 
Congress  to  which,  in  after  years,  I  shall  look  back  with  pleasure 
and  with  pride,  it  is,  that  in  the  midst  of  the  false  lights  and  false 
alarms  and  seductive  influences  by  which  the  ranks  of  freedom 
have  been  thinned  and  the  policy  of  Jefferson  trampled  under  foot, 
I  insisted  to  the  last  on  the  duty  of  Congress  to  protect  our  infant 
Territories  from  the  inroads  of  slavery  by  positive  law. 

Passing  from  this  topic,  I  proceed  to  notice  briefly  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Bill  which  recently  passed  this  body  and  is  now  the  law  of  the 
land.  By  the  Act  of  1793,  as  interpreted  by  the  Supreme  Court, 
the  slaveholder  may  pursue  his  fugitive  into  the  free  States,  and 
take  him,  either  with  or  without  legal  process.  If  he  sees  fit  to 
sue  out  a  warrant,  he  must  make  his  complaint  before  a  federal 
officer,  and  he  may  have  the  aid  of  the  federal  power  in  accom- 
plishing his  purpose.  The  States  are  not  bound  to  assist  him. 
They  may  not  pass  laws  to  discharge  the  fugitive  from  his  service, 
or  to  prevent  his  recapture  ;  and  this  prohibition  defines  their 
whole  duty  under  the  Constitution.  If  any  citizen  of  a  free  State 
is  found  guilty  of  aiding  or  abetting  in  the  escape  of  a  fugitive,  or  of 
obstructing  his  recapture,  or  of  harboring  or  concealing  him,  he  is 
liable  to  pay  five  hundred  dollars,  besides  damages  in  a  civil  action 
equal  to  the  value  of  the  fugitive.  This,  in  brief,  is  the  substance, 
and  these  are  the  provisions  of  the  act.  Now,  sir,  I  am  willing  to 
abide  by  this  law  thus  expounded,  and  so,  I  believe,  are  my  con- 
stituents. They  mean  to  remain  passive  as  between  the  slaveholder 
and  his  victim  ;  and  this,  in  all  conscience,  is  enough  to  ask  at  the 
hands  of  Christian  men.  It  is  all  they  mean  to  perform.  I  do  not 
believe  they  will  go  one  tithe  of  a  hair  beyond  it,  in  obedience  to 
any  law  of  Congress,  or  to  avoid  any  penalties  which  it  may  pre- 
scribe. 

The  law  recently  enacted  empowers  the  circuit  courts  of  the 
United  States  to  appoint  an  indefinite  number  of  commissioners 
within  their  respective  circuits,  whose  duty  it  shall  be,  on  applica- 
tion, to  issue  their  warrants  for  the  arrest  of  the  fugitive,  and  to 


"THE   HEALING  MEASURES."  43 

hear  and  determine  in  a  summary  way  the  complaint  of  the  claim- 
ant. It  is  made  the  duty  of  the  marshal  within  his  district  to  re- 
ceive and  execute  any  warrant  that  may  be  delivered  to  him  for 
that  purpose  ;  and  if  he  fails  to  do  so  he  is  liable  to  a  fine  of  $1,000. 
If,  after  the  arrest  of  the  supposed  fugitive,  he  shall  escape,  either 
with  or  without  the  assent  of  the  marshal,  the  latter  shall  be  liable 
on  his  official  bond  to  pay  the  claimant  the  value  of  the  fugitive 
thus  escaping.  In  order  to  facilitate  the  execution  of  these  pro- 
visions, it  is  further  provided,  that  said  commissioners  may  appoint 
an  indefinite  number  of  auxiliaries  within  their  respective  counties, 
whose  duty  it  shall  be  to  execute  such  process  as  shall  be  delivered 
to  them,  and  who  shall  have  the  power  to  summon  the  posse  comi- 
tatus  to  their  assistance.  It  is  likewise  enjoined  upon  "  all  good 
citizens  "  to  aid  in  the  capture  of  the  fugitive  when  thus  called 
upon.  For  obstructing  his  arrest,  or  rescuing  or  attempting  to  res- 
cue him  from  his  claimant,  or  aiding  or  abetting  in  his  escape,  or  for 
harboring  or  concealing  him,  any  person  is  liable  to  pay  a  fine  not 
exceeding  $1,000,  and  to  be  imprisoned  not  exceeding  six  months  ; 
and  shall,  moreover,  forfeit  and  pay  to  the  claimant  $1,000  for  each 
slave  so  lost.  The  case  between  the  claimant  and  the  fugitive  is 
to  be  heard  and  determined  in  a  summary  manner,  on  the  ex-jjarte 
affidavit  of  the  former,  and,  of  course,  without  a  trial  by  jury; 
thus  taking  it  for  granted  that  the  party  claimed  is  necessarily  a 
fugitive  slave,  and  jeoparding  the  liberty  of  our  own  citizens.  After 
the  certificate  of  the  commissioner  is  granted,  which  is  made  final 
and  conclusive  upon  all  magistrates  and  courts,  if  the  claimant 
will  make  oath  that  he  has  reason  to  fear  the  fugitive  will  be  res- 
cued from  him  before  he  can  be  taken  from  the  State,  the  officer 
who  made  the  arrest  shall  take  him  again  into  his  custody,  and 
employ  such  force  as  may  be  thought  necessary  to  remove  him  to 
the  State  from  whence  he  fled ;  and  all  the  expenses  of  this  pro- 
ceeding are  to  be  paid  out  of  the  treasury  of  the  United  States. 

These  are  the  material  provisions  of  the  bill ;  and  I  must  say  that 
a  tissue  of  more  heartless  and  cold-blooded  enactments  never  dis- 
graced the  legislation  of  a  civilized  people.  On  the  one  hand,  every 
possible  guard  is  thrown  around  the  rights  of  the  slaveholder,  as  if 
his  institution  had  the  stamp  of  divinity  upon  it,  and  must  be  cher- 
ished and  fostered  as  the  nation's  life  ;  whilst  on  the  other  hand, 
the  way  of  the  poor  fugitive,  whose  only  crime  is  a  desire  to  be 
free,  is  not  only  so  hedged  about  with  nets  and  snares  as  to  leave 
him  utterly  without  hope,  but  at  the  same  time  to  expose  the  free 
colored  man  of  the  North  to  any  Southern  land-pirate  who  may 


44  "THE   HEALING  MEASURES." 

seize  him  as  his  prey.  Not  satisfied  with  the  Act  of  1793*  it  dupli- 
cates its  penalties  ;  not  content  with  the  aid  of  the  federal  judiciary, 
it  calls  into  the  service  of  slavery  legions  of  officers  exercising  con- 
current judicial  functions,  whose  sole  business  is  the  hired  service 
of  slaveholders  ;  not  content  with  compelling  the  North  to  surrender 
the  fugitive,  it  taxes  our  people  with  the  expense  of  conveying  him 
to  the  State  from  whence  he  fled ;  not  content  with  all  this 
unrighteous  help,  it  commands  the  citizens  of  the  free  States  to  join 
in  the  hellish  employment  of  capturing  runaway  slaves  and  sending 
them  back  to  hopeless  bondage  and  despair.  Mr.  Chairman,  I  tell 
these  Southern  gentlemen  and  their  Northern  brethren  who  have 
passed  this  bill,  that  for  one,  I  would  resist  the  execution  of  this 
latter  provision,  if  need  be,  at  the  peril  of  my  life.  I  am  sure  that 
my  constituents  will  resist  it.  I  repeat  what  I  said  on  a  former 
occasion,  that  there  is  no  earthly  power  that  can  induce  us  thus  to 
take  sides  with  the  oppressor.  If  I  believed  the  people  I  represent 
were  base  enough  to  become  the  miserable  flunkies  of  a  God-for- 
saken  Southern  slave-hunter  by  joining  him  or  his  constables  in  the 
blood-hound  chase  of  a  panting  slave,  I  would  scorn  to  hold  a  seat 
on  this  floor  by  their  suffrages,  and  would  denounce  them  as  fit  sub- 
jects themselves  for  the  lash  of  the  slave-driver.  Sir,  they  will  do  no 
such  thing,  and  I  give  notice  now  to  our  Southern  brethren  that 
their  newly-vamped  fugitive  bill  cannot  be  executed  in  that  portion 
of  Indiana  which  I  have  the  honor  to  represent.  The  moral  sense 
of  our  people  will  revolt  at  its  provisions  and  set  them  at  defiance, 
while  the  man  who  shall  attempt  to  enforce  them  will  cover  him- 
self with  the  infamy  which  belongs  to  the  trade  of  a  pirate.  This 
is  my  judgment;  and  if  Southern  gentlemen  think  I  am  mistaken, 
the  question  between  us  may  easily  be  tested.  Slaves  sometimes 
come  among  us  from  the  South,  and  they  will  continue  to  do  so ; 
and  I  should  like  to  ascertain  the  strength  of  this  law  when  op- 
posed by  a  public  sentiment  inveterately  hostile  to  its  provisions. 
I  would  like  to  know  who  will  make  himself  the  detestable  scull- 
ion of  slaveholders  by  accepting  the  office  of  fugitive  slave  commis- 
sioner in  the  county  in  which  I  reside.  I  should  like  to  know  who 
in  that  county  will  consent  to  act  as  his  constable  and  bailiff;  and 
when  they  summon  the  ''posse  "  to  aid  them  in  running  down  and 
reclaiming  a  slave  I  should  like  to  know  who  will  obey  the  sum- 
mons. There  may  be  jjortions  of  Indiana  where  this  law  would  be 
executed  "  with  alacrity."  Indeed,  if  I  were  to  judge  from  what  I 
have  seen  and  heard  on  this  floor,  I  could  not  doubt  that  such  is 
the  fact.     For  the  honor  of  my  native  State  I  hope  the  evidence 


"THE   HEALING  MEASURES."  45 

to  which  I  allude  is  deceptive.  I  will  not  believe,  without  the 
strongest  proof,  that  this  law  will  find  favor  with  the  people  in  any 
section  of  the  State  ;  but  if  I  am  misled  by  the  charity  of  my  judg- 
ment I  can  only  repeat  that  the  Fourth  Congressional  District  be- 
longs, I  am  sure,  to  quite  a  different  stage  of  civilization. 

The  circumstances  under  which  this  law  has  been  passed  render 
it  peculiarly  degrading  to  the  free  States.  It  is  adding  insult  to 
injury.  When  the  free  colored  citizens  of  the  North  visit  the  ports 
of  South  Carolina,  Louisiana,  and  some  four  or  five  other  South- 
ern States,  they  are  dragged  from  the  vessels  on  which  they 
are  brought,  and  without  any  just  cause  whatever  thrown  into 
prison.  If,  when  these  vessels  depart,  they  are  not  removed,  and 
all  costs  paid  by  the  persons  in  whose  care  or  employ  they  came, 
they  are  sold  into  perpetual  slavei'y.  That  this  is  a  most  shameless 
outrage  upon  the  rights  of  Northern  freemen,  as  well  as  a  palpable 
violation  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  no  sane  man  can 
deny.  We  have  sent  men  to  the  Southern  States  to  remonstrate, 
in  the  most  respectful  terms,  against  the  laws  by  which  these  pro- 
ceedings are  authorized,  and  to  appeal  peaceably  to  their  own  tribu- 
nals in  order  to  test  their  constitutionality  ;  and  our  agents,  thus 
deputed,  have  been  driven  by  mob-violence  from  the  country. 
Gentlemen  from  the  South  take  fire  at  the  bare  mention  of  these 
grievances,  and  treat  our  complaints  with  scorn  and  derision. 
These  police  regulations,  they  tell  us,  are  absolutely  demanded  by 
the  security  of  their  institutions,  and  our  only  alternative  is  sub- 
mission at  all  hazards.  But  slaveholding  insolence  does  not  stop 
here.  Our  colored  citizens  are  not  only  seized  on  board  our  mer- 
chant vessels  in  Southern  ports  and  sold  into  bondage,  but  they  are 
seized  on  our  own  soil,  and  our  police  regulations,  designed  to  se- 
cure the  freedom  of  our  people,  are  set  at  defiance.  Police  regu- 
lations in  favor  of  slavery  are  sacred,  and  to  be  enforced  at  any 
cost  to  the  non-slaveholding  States ;  whilst  similar  regulations  in 
favor  of  freedom  are  but  so  many  aggressions  upon  Southern  rights, 
and  therefore  to  be  totally  disregarded.  And  yet,  under  these 
circumstances,  we  have  witnessed  the  humiliating  spectacle  of 
Northern  Representatives  uniting  with  the  South  in  fastening  this 
law,  with  all  its  infamous  provisions,  upon  the  people  of  the  free 
States,  in  order  to  restore  "  concord "  with  our  long-suffering 
Southern  brethren,  and  heal  the  wounds  of  the  nation  !  Sir,  con- 
cord is  not  the  offspring  of  injustice  and  wrong.  Submission  to 
outrage  cannot  restore  permanent  peace.  Discord,  incurable,  Avith 
all  its  ills,  will  hold  empire  in  the  land,  until  this  foul  blot  upon  our 


46  «  THE   HEALING  MEASURES." 

legislation  shall  be  wiped  out.  Repeal  must  be  the  fixed  resolve 
of  the  non-slaveholding  States,  and  the  people  of  the  South  should 
distinctly  understand  that  there  can  be  no  harmony  with  slave- 
holders until  that  resolve  is  consummated. 

The  outrage  of  such  a  measure,  particularly  in  view  of  the  cir- 
cumstances I  have  named,  is  heightened  by  the  manner  in  which 
it  was  carried  through  this  body.  No  opportunity  whatever*  was 
given  to  its  opponents  to  examine  or  discuss  its  provisions.  It 
passed  the  Senate  only  a  few  days  before  its  passage  here,  after 
various  amendments  ;  and  when  we  were  called  on  to  vote  upon 
it,  I  do  not  believe  that  ten  of  those  Northern  gentlemen  who  sup- 
ported it  had  looked  into  its  provisions  with  any  care,  or  knew 
what  the  bill  contained.  Although  one  of  the  most  important 
measures  of  the  session,  it  was  neither  printed  so  that  members 
could  examine  it,  nor  referred  to  the  Committee  of  the  Whole. 
Under  the  operation  of  the  gag  it  became  a  law;  and  the  large 
vote  it  received  seems  to  have  been  given  because  it  was  called  a 
fugitive  slave  bill,  and  was  understood  to  be  included  in  the  "  cen- 
eral  scheme  of  pacification,"  —  a  part  of  the  bargain  made  by  the 
high  contracting  parties.  Such,  in  fact,  were  the  reasons  urged  by 
Southern  members  why  Northern  ones  should  support  it,  whilst  the 
out-and-out  doughfaces  acknowledged  that  good  faith  required 
them  to  do  so. 

Mr.  Chairman,  this  memorable  session  of  the  Thirty-first  Con- 
gress is  rapidly  hastening  to  a  close.  The  people  will  judge  whether 
it  will  hereafter  be  famous  or  infamous  by  reason  of  its  leading 
measures.  The  Texas  Boundary  Bill,  which  so  shamefully  compro- 
mises Northern  honor  whilst  it  so  completely  gluts  the  demands  of 
slavery,  has  become  a  law.  The  Wilmot  Proviso  has  been  sacri- 
ficed, and  we  are  told  that  "  its  dead  carcass  has  been  carried  to  its 
unhallowed  grave  ;  "  whilst  the  faith  of  the  nation  has  been  plighted 
to  the  South,  so  far  as  Congress  has  the  power  to  do  so,  that  addi- 
tional slaveholding  States  may  be  admitted  into  the  Union  from  the 
Territories  for  which  governments  have  been  provided.  The  Fugi- 
tive Slave  Bill  has  been  passed,  which  perils  the  freedom  of  every 
colored  man  in  the  North,  and  makes  every  white  citizen  of  the 
free  States  a  cons' able  and  jail-keeper  for  Southern  slaveholders. 
These  are  the  fruits  of  the  protracted  and  unparalleled  struggle 
which  we  have  witnessed  in  both  houses  during  the  present  season. 
These  measures  have  been  brought  forth  after  a  congressional  in- 
cubation  of  more  than  nine  months,  to  the  great  joy  alike  of  poli- 
ticians and  Texas  bond-holders.   These  are  the  "  healing  measures  " 


"THE   HEALING  MEASURES."  47 

which  are  to  dry  up  the  "  gaping  wounds  "  that  have  threatened 
to  bleed  the  nation  to  death.  Harmony  and  concord,  we  are  told, 
will  now  resume  their  authority  in  this  distracted  land.  "  The 
country  is  safe,"  "  The  Union  is  saved,"  "  Civil  war  is  averted," 
whilst  it  is  announced,  with  equal  joy  and  the  firing  of  one  hun- 
dred guns  in  this  city,  that  "  agitation  "  is  ended  and  the  "fanatics  " 
no  longer  in  the  land  of  the  living. 

Sir,  let  not  the  slaveholder  nor  the  slaveholder's  friend  be  de- 
ceived by  the  delusive  hope  that  harmony  is  now  to  be   restored 
between  the  two  sections  of  the  Union.     The  day  of  its  restoration 
has  been  put  far  distant  in  the  triumph  of  the  very  measures  by 
which  it  was  sought  to  hasten  its  advent.     As  I  have  already  ob- 
served, harmony,  permanent  peace,  cannot  result  from  the  triumph 
of  wrong,  unless  the  world  is  governed  by  demons.     The  funda- 
mental  principle,  the  grand  idea  on  which  our  government  was 
founded,  is  Freedom,  the  sacredness  of  Human  Rights  ;  and  just 
in  proportion  as  its  policy  has  departed  from  this  idea  and  sought 
to  build  up  an  opposing  element,  an  alien  and  hostile  interest,  just 
in  that  same  proportion  has   it   sown   the    seeds  of  discord  and 
weakness  in  the  nation.     Concessions  to  slavery  have  produced 
all  the  "  agitation  "  and  all  the  mischiefs  by  which  the  govern- 
ment is  embarrassed.     It  is  worse  than  folly,  it  is  wickedness,  to 
strive  for  lasting  harmony  in  this  great  nation  in   any  other  way 
than   by  harmonizing  its  policy  with  the  thought  which   gave   it 
birth.     It  has  been  said  truly,  that  slavery  becomes  more  hideous 
in  this  country  than  in  any  other,  by  its  contrast  with  our  free  in- 
stitutions.    "  It  is  deformity  married  to  beauty  ;  it  is  as  if  a  flame 
from  hell  were  to  burst  forth  in  the  regions  of  the  blessed."    "  Can 
the  liberties  of  a  nation,"  said  Mr.  Jefferson,  "  be  thought  secure, 
when  we  have  removed  their  only  firm  basis,  a  conviction  in  the 
minds  of  the  people  that  these  liberties  are  the  gift  of  God  ?    That 
they  are  not  to  be  violated  but  with  his  wrath?    Indeed,  I  tremble 
for  my  country  when  I  reflect  that  God  is  just,  and  that  his  justice 
cannot  sleep  forever."     And  is  it  possible,  in  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  to  heal  the  wounds  of  the  country  and  save 
the  Union  by  removing  further  and  further  "  from  the  minds  of  the 
people  the  only  firm  basis  of  our  liberties,"  "  a  conviction  that  they 
are  the  gift  of  God?"     Is  the  salvation  of  the  Union  to  be  accom- 
plished  by  feeding  and   pampering  an    institution  which  in   178-1 
made  Jefferson  "tremble?"     The  people  of  the  South  contend 
that  slavery  is  a  blessing,  to  be  diffused  and  perpetuated  for  its  own 
sake.     They  do  not  acknowledge  it  as  an  evil,  which  they  continue 


48  "THE  HEALING  MEASURES.*' 

among  them  on  account  of  the  difficulty  of  escaping  from  it ;  but 
they  cling  to  it  from  choice,  through  the  love  of  it,  and  desire  to 
spread  the  curse  over  the  country.  And  they  are  the  propagan- 
dists of  their  opinions.  By  assuming  this  ground  they  array  them- 
selves in  hostility  to  the  moral  sense  of  the  civilized  world.  They 
forfeit  all  just  right  to  be  regarded  as  a  Christian  community.  To 
such  a  people  the  very  atmosphere  of  Christendom  is  poison.  And 
can  concord  be  restored  between  them  and  the  North  by  subjecting 
the  National  Government  to  their  policy  ?  "  Such  a  people,"  says  a 
gifted  writer,  "  should  studiously  keep  itself  from  communion  with 
the  free  part  of  the  country.  It  should  suffer  no  railroad  from  that 
section  to  cross  its  borders.  It  should  block  up  intercourse  with 
us  by  sea  and  land.  Still  more  :  it  should  abjure  connection  with 
the  whole  civilized  world  ;  for  from  every  country  it  would  be  in- 
vaded by  an  influence  hostile  to  slavery.  It  should  borrow  the 
code  of  the  Dictator  of  Paraguay,  and  seal  itself  hermetically  against 
the  infectious  books,  opinions,  and  visits  of  foreigners."  In  this 
way  it  is  possible  that  agitation  might  be  avoided  ;  but  so  long  as 
two  hundred  thousand  slaveholders  keep  in  bondage  three  millions 
of  their  fellow-beings,  and  not  only  demand  the  control  of  the  gov- 
ernment, but  that  the  moral  world  shall  stand  still  for  their  particu- 
lar accommodation,  so  long  will  the  spirit  of  freedom  wage  war  upon 
their  pretensions.  In  the  very  nature  of  things,  slavery  and  freedom 
are  the  irreconcilable  foes  of  each  other  ;  and  therefore  their  con- 
flicts cannot  cease  until  Justice  shall  assert  her  supremacy,  in  the 
overthrow  of  the  former.  "  The  world  is  against  it,  and  the  world's 
Maker."  Its  doom  is  sealed  by  the  operation  of  a  law  as  certain 
and  as  inevitable  as  that  of  gravitation. 

You  might  as  well  attempt  to  reverse  the  current  of  the  Missis- 
sippi, or  change  a  decree  of  fate,  as  to  attempt  by  an  act  of  Con- 
gress to  control  those  moral  forces  by  which  American  slavery 
shall  perish,  or  to  restore  harmony  to  the  country  by  giving  up 
the  government  to  its  unbridled  sway.  The  suppression  of  agita- 
tion in  the  non-slaveholdino;  States  will  not  and  cannot  follow  the 
"  peace  measures  "  recently  adopted.  The  alleged  death  of  the 
Wilmot  Proviso  will  only  prove  the  death  of  those  who  sought  to 
kill  it,  whilst  its  advocates  will  multiply  in  every  portion  of  the 
North.  The  covenant  for  the  admission  of  additional  slave  States 
will  be  repudiated,  whilst  a  renewed  and  constantly  increasing  agi- 
tation will  spring  up  in  behalf  of  the  doctrine  of  "  No  more  slave 
States."  The  outrage  of  surrendering  free  soil  to  Texan  slavery 
cannot  fail  to  be  followed  by  the  same  results,  and  just  as  naturally 


"THE   HEALING  MEASURES."  49 

as  fuel  feeds  the  flame  which  consumes  it.     The  passage  of  the 
Fugitive  Slave  Bill  will  open  a  fresh  wound  in  the  North,  and  it  will 
continue  to  bleed  just  as  long  as  the  law  stands  unrepealed.     The 
existence  of  slavery  in  the  capital  of  the  Republic,  upheld  by  the 
laws  of  Congress,  must  of  itself  keep  alive  an  agitation  which  will 
be  swelled  with  the  continuance  of  the  evil.     Sir,  these  questions 
are  no  longer  within  the  control  of  politicians.    Party  discipline, 
presidential  nominations,  and  the  spoils  of  office,  cannot  stifle  the 
free    utterance  of  the  people  respecting  the  great  struggle  now 
going  on  between  the  free  spirit  of  the  North  and  a  domineering 
oligarchy  in  the  South.     Gentlemen  may  quarrel  about  Pennsyl- 
vania iron,  and  New  England  manufactures,  river  and  harbor  im- 
provements, and  the  best  disposition  of  the  public  lands ;  but  the 
question  which  more  than  all  others  comes  home  to  the  bosoms  of 
men  is,  whether  slavery  or  freedom  shall  have  the  ascendency  in 
this  government.     "  I  never  would  have  drawn  my  sword  in  de- 
fense of  America,"  said  General  Lafayette,  "if  I  had  thought  that 
I  was  thereby  founding  a  land  of  slaves."     Here,  sir,  lies  the  great 
question,  and  it  must  be  met.     Neither  acts  of  Congress  nor  the 
devices  of  partisans  can  postpone  or  evade  it.     It  will  have  itself 
answered.     I   am  aware   that  it  involves  the  bread  and  butter  of 
whole  hosts  of  politicians ;  and  I  do  not  marvel  at  their  attempts 
to  escape  it,  to  smother  it,  to  hide  it  from  the  eyes  of  the  people, 
and  to  dam  up  the  moral   tide   which   is  forcing  it   upon  them. 
Neither  do  I  marvel  at  their  firing  of  guns  and  bacchanalian  liba- 
tions over  "  the  dead  body  of  the  Wilmot."    Such  labors  and  rejoic- 
ings are  by  no  means  unnatural ;  but  they  will  be  followed  by  dis- 
appointment.   It  is  in  vain  to  expect  peace  by  continued  concessions 
to  an  institution  which  is  becoming  every  hour  more  and  more  a 
stigma  upon  the  nation,  and  which  instead  of  seeking  new  conquests 
and  new  life  should  be  preparing  itself  with  grave-clothes  for  a  de- 
cent exit  from  the  world ;  concessions  revolting  to  the  humanity, 
the  conscientious  convictions,  the  religion  and  patriotism  of  the 
free  States.     When  the  action  of  the  Federal  Government  shall  be 
entirely  withdrawn  from  the  support  of  slavery,  and  the  States  in 
which  it  exists  shall  be  content  with  the  protection  which  their  own 
laws  shall  afford,  then  agitation  may  cease.     Sooner  than  that  it 
cannot,  and  it  ought  not. 
4 


THE   HOMESTEAD   BILL. 

HOUSE   OF  REPRESENTATIVES,  JANUARY   29,  1851. 

[The  doctrines  of  this  speech,  now  so  generally  accepted,  found  very  little  favor  in 
Congress  when  it  was  delivered.  "  Abolitionism  "  itself  was  scarcely  more  odious, 
while  the  few  men  who  advocated  the  homestead  policy  were  branded  as  "  agrarians," 
''  revolutionists,"  and  "  levelers."  Only  eleven  years  later,  however,  the  Homestead 
Bill  became  a  law,  and  its  wisdom  and  beneficence  have  already  been  fully  vindicated. 
Its  single  radical  fault  was  the  lack  of  a  provision  forbidding  the  sale  of  the  public 
lands  in  large  bodies  to  non-residents  for  speculative  purposes ;  and  for  this  supple- 
mental enactment  Mr.  Julian  has  labored  zealously  for  years.] 

Mr.  Speaker,  —  The  anxiety  I  feel  for  the  success  of  the  meas- 
ure now  before  us,  and  its  great  importance,  as  I  conceive,  to  the 
whole  country,  have  induced  me  to  beg  the  indulgence  of  the 
House  in  a  brief  statement  of  the  reasons  which  urge  me  to  give 
it  my  support.  I  do  this  the  more  willingly,  because  there  has 
been  a  manifest  disposition  here,  during  the  whole  of  the  session, 
to  suppress  entirely  the  discussion  of  this  bill,  and  at  the  same 
time,  by  parliamentary  expedients,  to  avoid  any  direct  action  upon 
it.  It  seems  to  be  troublesome  to  gentlemen.  Many  who  are 
opposed  to  its  principles  appear  to  be  haunted  by  the  suspicion  that 
the  people  are  for  it,  and  hence  they  will  not  vote  directly  against 
it.  They  prefer  not  to  face  it  in  any  way.  The  proceedings  on 
yesterday  prove  this.  The  House  then  refused  to  lay  the  bill  on 
the  table  ;  but  immediately  afterwards,  its  reference  to  the  Com- 
mittee of  the  Whole,  which  was  substantially  equivalent,  was  car- 
ried by  a  large  majority.  There  was  an  opportunity  of  evading 
the  responsibility  of  a  direct  vote,  and  of  accomplishing,  by  indi- 
rection, what  gentlemen  did  not  dare  do  by  their  open  and  in- 
dependent action.  I  refer  to  these  facts  because  I  wish  them  to 
go  before  the  people.  I  desire  the  country  to  understand  the 
action  of  this  body,  in  reference  to  the  question  under  discussion. 

Our  present  land  system  was  established  by  act  of  Congress  as 
far  back  as  the  year  1785.  From  that  time  to  the  80th  of  last 
September  the  government  has  sold  one  hundred  and  two  millions 
four  hundred  and  eight  thousand  six  hundred  and  forty  acres. 
Within  the  same  period  it  has  donated  about  fifty  millions  of  acres 


THE   HOMESTEAD   BILL.  51 

for  the  purposes  of  education,  for  internal  improvements,  for  the 
benefit  of  private  individuals  and  companies,  and  for  military  ser- 
vices. This  calculation  does  not  include  the  land  granted  by  the 
Mexican  Bounty  Law  of  1847,  which  has  not  yet  spent  its  force, 
and  which  will  exhaust  from  twelve  to  fifteen  millions  of  acres. 
The  Bounty  Law  of  1850  will  subtract  from  the  public  domain  the 
further  sum  of  probably  about  fifty  millions  of  acres.  Besides  all 
this,  there  were  very  large  grants  of  land  made  at  the  last  session 
of  Congress  for  internal  improvements ;  and  there  are  at  this  time 
not  less  than  sixty  bills  before  us  asking  donations  of  land,  larger 
or  smaller,  for  various  public  and  private  purposes.  Should  the 
government,  however,  pause  at  the  point  we  have  now  reached  in 
the  prosecution  of  our  land  policy,  there  will  still  remain,  after 
deducting  the  sales  and  grants  I  have  mentioned,  the  enormous 
sum  of  about  fourteen  hundred  millions  of  acres.  The  manage- 
ment  of  this  vast  fund  is  devolved  by  the  Constitution  upon  Con- 
gress, and  its  just  disposition  presents  one  of  the  gravest  questions 
ever  brought  before  the  national  legislature.  The  bill  under  con- 
sideration contemplates  a  radical  change  in  the  policy  pursued  by 
the  government  from  its  foundation  to  the  present  time.  It  aban- 
dons the  idea  of  holding  the  public  domain  as  a  source  of  revenue  ; 
it  abandons,  at  the  same  time,  the  policy  of  frittering  it  away  by 
grants  to  the  States  or  to  chartered  companies  for  special  and  local 
objects ;  and  it  makes  it  free,  in  limited  portions,  to  actual  settlers, 
on  condition  of  occupancy  and  improvement.  This,  in  my  judg- 
ment, is  the  wisest  appropriation  of  the  public  lands  within  the 
power  of  Congress  to  make,  whether  viewed  in  the  light  of  econ- 
omy, or  the  brighter  light  of  humanity  and  justice. 

I  advocate  the  freedom  of  our  public  domain,  in  the  first  place, 
on  the  broad  ground  of  natural  right.  I  go  back  to  first  princi- 
ples ;  and  holding  it  to  be  wrong  for  governments  to  make  mer- 
chandise of  the  earth,  I  would  have  this  fundamental  truth  recog- 
nized by  Congress  in  devising  measures  for  the  settlement  and 
improvement  of  our  vacant  territory.  I  am  no  believer  in  the  doc- 
trines of  Agrarianism,  or  Socialism,  as  these  terms  are  generally 
understood.  The  friends  of  land  reform  claim  no  right  to  interfere 
with  the  laws  of  property  of  the  several  States,  or  the  vested  rights 
of  their  citizens.  They  advocate  no  leveling  policy,  designed  to 
strip  the  rich  of  their  possessions  by  any  sudden  act  of  legislation. 
They  simply  demand  that,  in  laying  the  foundations  of  empire  in 
the  yet  unpeopled  regions  of  the  great  West,  Congress  shall  give 
its  sanction   to  the  natural   right  of  the  landless  citizen  of  the 


52  THE    HOMESTEAD   BILL. 

country  to  a  home  upon  its  soil.  The  earth  was  designed  by  its 
Maker  for  the  nourishment  and  support  of  man.  The  free  and 
unbought  occupancy  of  it  belonged,  originally,  to  the  people,  and 
the  cultivation  of  it  was  the  legitimate  price  of  its  fruits.  This  is 
the  doctrine  of  nature,  confirmed  by  the  teachings  of  the  Bible. 
In  the  first  peopling  of  the  earth,  it  was  as  free  to  all  its  inhabitants 
as  the  sunlight  and  the  air  ;  and  every  man  has,  by  nature,  as  per- 
fect a  right  to  a  reasonable  portion  of  it,  upon  which  to  subsist,  as 
he  has  to  inflate  his  lungs  with  the  atmosphere  which  surrounds  it, 
or  to  drink  of  the  waters  which  pass  over  its  surface.  This  right 
is  as  inalienable,  as  emphatically  God-given,  as  the  right  to  liberty 
or  life  ;  and  government,  when  it  deprives  him  of  it,  independent 
of  his  own  act,  is  guilty  of  a  wanton  usurpation  of  power,  a  fla- 
grant abuse  of  its  trust.  In  founding  States,  and  rearing  the  social 
fabric,  these  principles  should  always  have  been  recognized.  Every 
man,  indeed,  on  entering  into  a  state  of  society,  and  partaking  of 
its  advantages,  must  necessarily  submit  the  natural  right  of  which 
I  speak  (as  he  must  every  other)  to  such  regulations  as  may  be 
established  for  the  general  good;  yet  it  can  never  be  understood 
that  he  has  renounced  it  altogether,  save  by  his  own  alienation  or 
forfeiture.  It  attaches  to  him,  and  inheres  in  him,  in  virtue  of  his 
humanity,  and  should  be  sacredly  guarded  as  one  of  those  funda- 
mental rights  to  secure  which  "  governments  are  instituted  among 
men."' 

The  justness  of  this  reasoning  must  be  manifest  to  any  one  who 
will  give  the  subject  his  attention.  Man,  we  say,  has  a  natural 
right  to  life.  What  are  we  to  understand  by  this  ?  Surely,  it  will 
not  be  contended  that  it  must  be  construed  strictly,  as  a  mere  right 
to  breathe,  looking  no  farther,  and  keeping  out  of  view  the  great 
purpose  of  existence.  The  right  to  life  implies  what  the  law  books 
call  a  "  right  of  way "  to  its  enjoyment.  It  carries  necessarily 
with  it  the  right  to  the  means  of  living,  including  not  only  the 
elements  of  light,  air,  fire,  and  water,  but  land  also.  Without  this 
man  could  have  no  habitation  to  shelter  him  from  the  elements, 
nor  raiment  to  cover  and  protect  his  body,  nor  food  to  sustain  life. 
These  means  of  living  are  not  only  necessary,  but  absolutely  in- 
dispensable. Without  them  life  is  impossible  ;  and  yet  without 
land  they  are  unattainable,  except  through  the  charity  of  others. 
They  are  at  the  mercy  of  the  landholder.  Does  government  then 
fulfill  its  mission  when  it  encourages  or  permits  the  monopoly  of 
the  soil,  and  thus  puts  millions  in  its  power,  shorn  of  every  right 
except  the  right  to  beg  ?     The  right  to  life  is   an  empty  mockery, 


THE   HOMESTEAD   BILL.  53 

if  man  is  to  be  denied  a  place  on  the  earth  on  which  to  establish  a 
home  for  the  shelter  and  nurture  of  his  family,  and  employ  his 
hands  in  obtaining  the  food  and  clothing  necessary  to  his  comfort. 
To  say  that  God  has  given  him  the  right  to  life,  and  at  the  same 
time  that  government  may  rightfully  withhold  the  means  of  its 
enjovment,  except  by  the  permission  of  others,  is  not  simply  an 
absurdity,  but  a  libel  on  his  Providence.  It  is  true  there  are  mul- 
titudes of  landless  poor  in  this  country,  and  in  all  countries,  utterly 
without  the  power  to  acquire  homes  upon  the  soil,  who,  neverthe- 
less, are  not  altogether  destitute  of  the  essential  blessings  I  have 
named  ;  but  they  are  dependent  for  them  upon  the  saving  grace  of 
the  few  who  have  the  monopoly  of  the  soil.  They  are  helpless 
pensioners  upon  the  calculating  bounty  of  those  by  whom  they 
have  been  disinherited  of  their  birthright.  Was  it  ever  designed 
that  men  should  become  vagrants  and  beggars  by  reason  of  unjust 
legislation,  stripped  of  their  right  to  the  soil,  robbed  of  the  joys  of 
home,  and  of  those  virtues  and  affections  which  ripen  only  in  the 
family  circle  ?  Reason  and  justice  revolt  at  such  a  conclusion. 
The  gift  of  life,  I  repeat,  is  inseparable  from  the  resources  by 
which  alone  it  can  be  made  a  blessing,  and  fulfill  its  great  end. 
And  this  truth  is  beginning  to  dawn  upon  the  world.  The  senti- 
ment is  becoming  rooted  in  the  great  heart  of  humanity,  that  the 
right  to  a  home  attaches  of  necessity  to  the  right  to  live,  inasmuch 
as  the  physical,  moral,  and  intellectual  well-being  of  each  individ- 
ual cannot  be  secured  without  it ;  and  that  government  is  bound 
to  guarantee  it  to  the  fullest  practicable  extent.  This  is  one  of 
the  most  cheering  signs  of  the  times.  "  The  grand  doctrine,  that 
every  human  being  should  have  the  means  of  self-culture,  of  prog- 
ress in  knowledge  and  virtue,  of  health,  comfort,  and  happiness,  of 
exercising  the  powers  and  affections  of  a  man,  —  this  is  slowly 
taking  its  place  as  the  highest  social  truth." 

But  quitting  the  ground  of  right,  I  proceed  to  some  considera- 
tions of  a  different  character.  I  take  it  to  be  the  clear  interest  of 
this  government  to  render  every  acre  of  its  soil  as  productive  as 
labor  can  make  it.  More  than  one  half  the  land  already  sold  at 
the  different  land-offices,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  has  fallen  into  the 
cold  grasp  of  the  speculator,  who  has  held  it  in  large  quantities  for 
years  without  improvement,  thus  excluding  actual  settlers  who 
would  have  made  it  a  source  of  wealth  to  themselves  and  to  the 
public  revenue.  This  is  not  only  a  legalized  robbery  of  the  land- 
less, but  an  exceedingly  short-sighted  policy.  It  does  not,  as  I 
shall  presently  show,  give  employment  to  labor,  nor  productiveness 


54  THE   HOMESTEAD  BILL. 

to  the  soil,  nor  add  to  the  treasury  by  increased  returns  in  the  shape 
of  taxation.  It  is  legislative  profligacy.  The  true  interest  of 
agriculture  is  to  widen  the  field  of  its  operations  as  far  as  practi- 
cable, and  then,  by  a  judicious  tillage,  to  make  it  yield  the  very 
largest  resources  compatible  with  the  population  of  the  country. 
The  measure  now  before  us  will  secure  this  object  by  giving  inde- 
pendent homesteads  to  the  greatest  number  of  cultivators,  thus 
imparting  dignity  to  labor,  and  stimulating  its  activity.  It  may  be 
taken  for  granted  as  a  general  truth,  that  a  nation  will  be  power- 
ful, prosperous,  and  happy,  in  proportion  to  the  number  of  inde- 
pendent cultivators  of  its  soil.  All  experience  demonstrates  that 
it  is  most  favorable  to  agriculture  to  have  every  plantation  culti- 
vated by  its  proprietor ;  nor  is  it  less  conducive  to  the  same  object, 
or  less  important  to  the  general  welfare,  that  every  citizen  who 
desires  it  should  be  the  owner  of  a  plantation,  and  engaged  in  its 
cultivation.  The  disregard  of  these  simple  and  just  principles  in 
the  actual  policy  of  nations,  has  been  one  of  the  great  scourges  of 
the  world.  We  now  have  it  in  our  power,  without  revolution  or 
violence,  to  carry  them  into  practice,  and  reap  their  beneficent 
fruits  ;  and  a  nobler  work  cannot  engage  the  thoughts  or  enlist 
the  sympathies  of  the  statesman.  No  governmental  policy  is  so  wise 
as  that  which  keeps  constantly  before  the  mind  of  the  citizen  the 
promotion  of  the  public  good,  by  a  scrupulous  regard  for  his  private 
interest.  This  principle  should  be  stamped  upon  all  our  legislation, 
since  it  will  establish  the  strongest  of  all  ties  between  him  and  the 
State.  A  philosophic  writer  of  the  last  century,  in  sketching  a 
perfectly-organized  commonwealth,  has  the  following  :  — 

"  As  every  man  ploughed  his  own  field,  cultivation  was  more  active,  provis- 
ions more  abundant,  and  individual  opulence  constituted  the  public  wealth. 

"  As  the  earth  was  free,  and.  its  possession  easy  and  secure,  every  man  was 
a  proprietor,  and  the  division  of  jiroperty,  by  rendering  luxury  impossible,  pre- 
served the  purity  of  manners. 

"  Every  man  finding  his  own  well-being  in  the  constitution  of  his  country, 
took  a  lively  interest  in  its  preservation  ;  if  a  stranger  attacked  it,  having  his 
field,  his  house,  to  defend,  he  carried  into  the  combat  all  the  animosity  of  a 
personal  quarrel,  and,  devoted  to  his  own  interests,  he  was  devoted  to  his 
country." 

Here,  sir,  are  principles  worthy  to  guide  our  rulers  in  the  dispo- 
sition of  the  public  lands.  Give  homes  to  the  landless  multitudes 
in  the  country,  and  you  snatch  them  from  crime  and  starvation, 
from  the  prison  and  the  almshouse,  and  place  them  in  a  situation 
at  once  the  most  conducive  to  virtue,  to  the  prosperity  of  the 
country,  and  to  loyalty  to  its  government  and   laws.     Instead  of 


THE   HOMESTEAD  BILL.  55 

paupers  and  outcasts,  they  will  become  independent  citizens  and 
freeholders,  pledged  by  their  gratitude  to  the  government,  by  self- 
interest,  and  by  the  affections  of  our  nature,  to  consecrate  to  honest 
toil  the  spot  on  which  the  family  altar  is  to  be  erected  and  the 
family  circle  kept  unbroken.  They  will  feel,  as  never  before,  the 
value  of  free  institutions,  and  the  obligations  resting  upon  them 
as  citizens.  Should  a  foreign  foe  invade  our  shores,  having  their 
homes  and  their  firesides  to  defend,  they  would  rush  to  the  field  of 
deadly  strife,  carrying  with  them  "  all  the  animosity  of  a  personal 
quarrel."  "  Independent  farmers,"  said  President  Jackson,  "  are 
everywhere  the  basis  of  society,  and  true  friends  of  liberty  ;  "  and 
an  army  of  such  men,  however  unpracticed  in  the  art  of  war, 
would  be  invincible.  Carry  out  this  reform  of  multiplying  inde- 
pendent cultivators,  and  thus  rendering  labor  at  once  honorable 
and  gainful,  and  I  verily  believe  more  will  be  done  than  could  be 
accomplished  by  any  other  means  to  break  down  our  military 
establishments,  and  divert  the  vast  sums  annually  expended  in 
maintaining  them  to  the  arts  of  peace.  It  is  emphatically  a  peace 
movement,  since  it  will  curb  the  war  spirit  by  subsidizing  to  the 
public  interest  the  "  raw  material,"  of  which  our  armies  are  gen- 
erally composed.  By  giving  homes  to  the  poor,  the  idle,  the 
vicious,  it  will  attach  them  to  the  soil,  and  cause  them  to  feel,  as 
the  producers  of  the  country  ought  to  feel,  that  upon  them  rest  the 
burdens  of  war.  The  policy  of  increasing  the  number  and  inde- 
pendence of  those  who  till  the  ground,  in  whatever  light  considered, 
commends  itself  to  the  government.  England,  and  the  countries 
of  Western  Europe,  have  risen  in  prosperity,  just  in  proportion  as 
freedom  has  been  communicated  to  the  occupiers  of  the  soil.  The 
work  of  tillage  was  at  first  carried  on  by  slaves,  then  by  villains, 
then  by  metayers,  and  finally  by  farmers  ;  the  improvement  of 
those  countries  keeping  pace  with  these  progressive  changes  in  the 
condition  of  the  cultivator.  The  same  observations  would  doubt- 
less apply  to  other  countries  and  to  different  ages  of  the  world. 
But  I  need  not  go  abroad  for  illustrations  of  this  principle.  Look, 
for  example,  at  slave  labor  in  this  country.  Compare  Virginia 
with  Ohio.  In  the  former  the  soil  is  tilled  by  the  slave.  He 
feels  no  interest  in  the  government,  because  it  allows  him  the 
exercise  of  no  civil  rights.  It  does  not  even  give  him  the  right  to 
himself.  He  has  of  course  no  interest  in  the  soil  upon  which  he 
toils.  His  arm  is  not  nerved,  nor  his  labor  lightened  by  the 
thought  of  home,  for  to  him  it  has  no  value  or  sacredness.  It  is 
no  defense  against  outrage.     His  own  offspring  are  the  property 


56  THE   HOMESTEAD   BILL. 

of  another.  He  does  not  toil  for  his  family,  but  for  a  stranger. 
His  -wife  and  children  may  be  torn  from  him  at  any  moment,  sold 
like  cattle  to  the  trader,  and  separated  from  him  forever.  Labor 
brings  no  new  comforts  to  himself  or  his  family.  The  motive  from 
which  he  toils  is  the  lash.  He  is  robbed  of  his  humanity  by  the 
system  which  has  made  him  its  victim.  Can  the  cultivation  of  the 
soil  by  such  a  population  add  wealth  or  prosperity  to  the  com- 
monwealth? The  question  answers  itself.  I  need  not  point  to 
Virginia,  with  her  great  natural  advantages,  her  ample  resources 
in  all  the  elements  of  wealth  and  power,  yet  dwindling  and  dying 
under  the  curse  of  slave  labor.  But  cross  the  River  Ohio,  and 
how  changed  the  scene  !  Agriculture  is  in  the  most  thriving  con- 
dition. The  whole  land  teems  with  abundance.  The  owners  of 
the  soil  are  in  general  its  cultivators,  and  these  constitute  the  best 
portion  of  the  population.  Labor,  instead  of  being  looked  upon 
as  degrading,  is  thus  rendered  honorable  and  independent.  The 
ties  of  interest,  as  well  as  the  stronger  ties  of  affection,  animate 
the  toils  of  the  husbandman,  and  strengthen  his  attachment  to  the 
ffovernment;  for  the  man  who  loves  his  home  will  love  his  country. 
His  own  private  emolument  and  the  public  good  are  linked  together 
in  his  thoughts,  and  whilst  he  is  rearing  a  virtuous  family  on  his 
own  homestead,  he  is  contributing  wealth  and  strength  to  the 
State.  Population  is  rapidly  on  the  increase,  whilst  new  towns 
are  springing  up  almost  as  by  magic.  Manufactures  and  the 
mechanic  arts,  in  general,  are  in  a  flourishing  condition,  whilst  the 
country  is  dotted  over  with  churches,  school-houses,  and  smiling 
habitations.  The  secret  of  all  this  is  the  distribution  of  landed 
property,  and  its  cultivation  by  freemen.  But  even  in  the  virgin 
State  of  Ohio,  the  curse  of  land  monopoly,  or  white  slavery,  is  be- 
ginning to  exhibit  its  bitter  fruits,  as  it  will  everywhere,  if  un- 
checked by  wise  legislation.  Let  Congress,  therefore,  see  to  it,  in 
the  beginning,  by  an  organic  law  for  the  public  domain  yet  remain- 
ing unsold,  that  this  curse  shall  be  excluded  from  it.  The  enact- 
ment of  such  a  law  should  not  be  delayed  a  single  hour.  Now  is 
the  "  golden  moment"  for  action.  The  rapidity  with  which  our 
public  lands  have  been  melting  away  for  the  past  few  years  under 
the  prodigal  policy  of  the  government  renders  all-important  the 
speedy  interposition  of  Congress. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  have  spoken,  incidentally,  of  slavery.  This,  I 
am  aware,  may  be  considered  a  violation  of  the  "  final  settlement," 
the  remarkably  sanative  measures,  ratified  by  Congress  a  few 
months   since.      I   beg   leave    to  say,  however,  that  I  think  the 


THE   HOMESTEAD  BILL.  57 

adoption  of  the  policy  for  which  I  am  contending  will  be  a  much 
better  "  settlement "  of  the  slavery  question  than  the  one  to 
which  I  refer.  Donate  the  land  lying  within  our  Territories,  in 
limited  plantations,  to  actual  settlers  whose  interest  and  necessity 
it  will  be  to  cultivate  the  soil  with  their  own  hands,  and  it  will  be 
a  far  more  formidable  barrier  against  the  introduction  of  slavery 
than  Mr.  Webster's  "  ordinance  of  nature,"  or  even  the  celebrated 
ordinance  of  Jefferson.  Slavery  only  thrives  on  extensive  estates. 
In  a  country  cut  up  into  small  farms,  occupied  by  as  many  inde- 
pendent proprietors  who  live  by  their  own  toil,  it  would  be  impos- 
sible, —  there  would  be  no  room  for  it.  Should  the  bill  now  under 
discussion  become  a  law,  the  poor  white  laborers  of  the  South,  as 
well  as  of  the  North,  will  flock  to  our  Territories  ;  labor  will  be- 
come common  and  respectable  ;  our  democratic  theory  of  equality 
will  be  realized ;  closely  associated  communities  will  be  established ; 
whilst  education,  so  impossible  to  the  masses  where  slavery  and 
land  monopoly  prevail,  will  be  accessible  to  the  people  through 
their  common  schools ;  and  thus  physical  and  moral  causes  will 
combine  in  excluding  slavery  forever  from  the  soil.  The  freedom 
of  the  public  lands  is  therefore  an  anti-slavery  measure.  It  will 
weaken  the  slave  power  by  lending  the  official  sanction  of  the  gov- 
ernment to  the  natural  right  of  man,  as  man,  to  a  home  upon  the 
soil,  and  of  course  to  the  fruits  of  his  own  labor.  It  will  weaken 
the  system  of  chattel  slavery,  by  making  war  upon  its  kindred 
system  of  wages  slavery,  giving  homes  and  employment  to  its  vic- 
tims, and  equalizing  the  condition  of  the  people.  It  will  weaken 
it,  by  repudiating  the  vicious  dogma  of  the  slaveholder  that  the 
laborious  occupations  are  dishonorable  and  degrading.  And  it  will 
weaken  it,  as  I  have  just  shown,  by  confining  it  within  its  present 
limits,  and  thus  forcing  its  supporters  to  seek  some  mode  of  deliv- 
erance from  its  evils.  Pass  this  bill,  therefore,  and  whilst  the 
South  can  have  no  cause  to  complain  of  Northern  aggression,  it 
will  shake  her  peculiar  institution  to  its  foundations.  Her  three 
millions  of  slaves,  now  toiling,  not  under  the  stars,  but  the  stripes 
of  our  flag,  robbed  of  their  dearest  rights,  inventoried  as  goods  and 
chattels,  and  plundered  of  their  humanity  by  law,  may  look  for- 
ward with  new  hope  to  their  final  exodus  from  bondage.  A  num- 
ber of  Southern  gentlemen,  I  am  aware,  view  the  subject  differently. 
I  am  entirely  willing  that  they  should.  I  am  satisfied  to  find  them 
on  the  right  side  of  the  question.  I  speak  only  for  myself,  and 
claim  no  right  to  express  any  opinion  but  my  own.  Had  this 
policy  been  adopted  by  the  government   in  1832,  when  General 


58  THE   HOMESTEAD  BILL. 

Jackson  first  recommended  it,  it  is  highly  probable  that  Texas, 
whether  in  or  out  of  the  Union,  would  never  have  been  a  slave 
country.  She  would  have  been  compelled  to  exclude  slavery  by 
adopting  the  same  landed  policy  in  order  to  secure  the  settlement 
of  her  domain.  The  same  cause  would  have  prevented  our  Mexi- 
can War,  and  thus  have  saved  to  the  country  the  millions  of  money 
and  thousands  of  lives  that  were  sacrificed  in  that  unsanctified 
struggle  for  the  extension  of  human  bondage. 

Mr.  Speaker,  there  is  one  consideration  pertaining  to  this  bill 
which  deserves  a  more  distinct  consideration  than  I  have  given  it. 
I  have  already  said  that  the  right  to  life  implies,  of  necessity,  the 
right  to  a  home  upon  the  soil.  Man  cannot  live  without  this,  and 
therefore  he  has  the  same  right  to  it  that  he  has  to  life  itself.  This 
measure  gives  a  new  sanction  to  this  right,  a  new  sacredness  to 
home.  It  throws  the  broad  shield  of  the  government  over  that 
greatest  and  most  beneficent  of  all  institutions, — the  family.  Home 
is  the  great  school  of  virtue,  the  centre  of  the  heart's  best  affections, 
"  the  birthplace  of  every  good  impulse,  of  every  sacred  thought." 
The  grand  interests  of  human  life  belong  to  it.  It  has  been  said, 
that  just  so  far  as  the  family  is  improved,  its  duties  performed,  and 
its  blessings  prized,  all  artificial  institutions,  including  government 
itself,  are  superseded.  The  most  important  part  of  the  education  of 
every  man  and  woman  is  received  at  home.  The  germs  of  character 
are  there  moulded  and  developed  by  the  plastic  power  of  the  parent. 
The  government,  therefore,  by  every  legitimate  means,  should 
favor  the  improvement,  the  security  of  the  family,  and  the  strength 
and  purity  of  the  domestic  relations  ;  for  by  so  doing  it  makes 
strong  the  most  enduring  foundations  of  our  freedom.  This  should 
be  the  first  object  of  its  care.  "It  is  idle,"  says  a  leading  London 
newspaper,  "  to  talk  of  secular  education  —  it  is  idle  to  talk  of 
religious  instruction,  whilst  the  great  mass  of  the  people  have  no 
homes.  How  are  we  to  teach,  how  are  we  to  instruct  ;  what  can 
the  schoolmaster  achieve,  what  the  preacher,  when  the  intellects 
which  the  one  would  elevate,  and  the  hearts  which  the  other  would 
teach,  are  left  to  the  cruel  training  of  the  streets  ?  Thousands  and 
tens  of  thousands  of  our  children  have  no  other  education,  no 
other  Christianity,  than  the  education  and  Christianity  of  the  pave- 
ment. They  have  been  turned  adrift  when  scarcely  able  to  walk 
unaided.  Another  infant  has  taken  its  place  at  the  mother's 
breast ;  and  the  child  of  two  years  has  made  acquaintance  with 
the  pavement.  And  so  commences  the  out-of-door  education 
which  fills  our  streets  with  profligate  women  and  thieves." 


THE   HOMESTEAD  BILL.  59 

Not  less  in  point  here  as  an  illustration,  nor  less  truthful,  is  the 
following  sketch  of  the  education  of  a  pauper  child,  by  Harriet 
Martineau  :  — 

"  The  infant  is  reared  (if  not  in  the  work-house),  in  some  unwholesome  room 
or  cellar,  amidst  damp  and  dirt,  and  the  noises  and  sights  of  vice  or  folly.  He 
is  badly  nursed  and  fed,  and  grows  up  feeble  or  in  a  state  of  bodily  uneasiness 
which  worries  his  temper,  and  makes  his  passions  excitable.  He  is  not  soothed 
by  the  constant  tenderness  of  a  decent  mother,  who  feels  it  a  great  duty  to  make 
him  as  good  and  happy  as  she  can,  and  contrives  to  find  time  and  thought  for 
that  object.  He  tumbles  in  the  dust  of  the  road  or  the  mud  of  the  gutter, 
snatches  food  wherever  he  can  get  it,  quarrels  with  anybody  who  thwarts  him  if 
he  be  a  bold  boy,  and  sneaks  and  lies  if  he  be  naturally  a  coward.  He  indulges 
every  appetite,  as  a  matter  of  course,  as  it  arises  :  for  he  has  no  idea  that  he 
should  not.  He  hates  everybody  who  interferes  with  his  license,  and  has  the 
best  liking  for  those  who  use  the  same  license  with  himself.  He  knows  nothing 
of  any  place  or  people  but  those  he  sees,  and  never  dreams  of  any  world  beyond 
that  of  his  own  eyes.  He  does  not  know  what  society  is,  or  law,  or  duty  ;  and 
therefore,  when  he  injures  society,  and  comes  under  the  inflictions  of  the  law, 
for  gross  violations  of  duty,  he  understands  no  more  of  what  is  done  to  him 
than  if  he  was  carried  through  certain  ceremonies  conducted  in  an  unknown 
tongue.  He  has  some  dim  notion  of  glory  in  dying  boldly  before  the  eyes  of 
the  crowd  ;  so  he  goes  to  the  gallows  in  a  mocking  mood,  as  ignorant  of  the 
true  import  of  life  and  human  faculties  as  the  day  he  was  born.  Or,  if  not 
laid  hold  of  by  the  law,  he  goes  on  toward  his  grave  brawling  and  drinking, 
or  half  asleep  in  mind  and  inert  or  diseased  in  body,  till  at  last  he  dies  as  the 
beast  dies."  * 

Here,  sir,  we  have  a  forcible  exhibition  of  the  evils  of  land 
monopoly,  and  the  importance  of  homes  for  all.  These  evils  can 
only  be  removed  by  removing  their  cause.  We  must  strike  at  the 
root  of  so  much  wretchedness.  The  country  has  been  flooded  with 
discourses  and  essays  on  the  subject  of  education.  Statistics  have 
been  published  in  the  United  States,  in  Great  Britain,  and  in  other 
countries,  showing  the  proportion  of  the  population  who  are  uned- 
ucated, and  tracing  the  prevalence  of  crime  to  that  source.  This 
is  all  well  enough,  and  no  effort,  certainly,  should  be  spared  by  gov- 
ernments to  educate  the  masses  ;  but  their  first  and  great  want  is 
homes,  and  bread.  Without  these,  education,  and  temperance,  and 
preaching,  and  praying,  will  fail  in  their  purpose.  They  will  be 
palliatives  at  best.  Land  monopoly  brings  into  the  country  a  sur- 
plus laboring  population,  whom  it  first  deprives  of  their  natural 
right  to  the  soil,  and  then  prescribes  the  terms  upon  which  it  will 
give  them  food  and  shelter.  The  price  of  labor,  as  of  everything 
else,  depends  upon  the  supply  and  demand.  Land  monopoly,  by 
its  unholy  exactions,  makes  sure  of  a  large  supply,  and  then   pre 

1  Household  Education. 


60  THE    HOMESTEAD   BILL. 

sents  to  the  famishing  laborer  the  alternatives  of  death  by  starva- 
tion, or  life  on  such  terms  as  its  own  mercy  may  dictate.  Govern- 
ment should  prevent  this.  It  is  false  to  its  trust,  a  bastard  to  its  true 
mission,  if  it  will  not.  It  was  never  designed  that  man  should  be 
wholly  dependent  upon  his  fellow  for  the  bread  and  breath  of  life. 
It  was  never  designed  that  he  should  be  deprived  of  a  homestead 
for  himself  and  his  family,  as  a  defense  against  the  cold-blooded 
rapacity  of  avarice.  God  never  intended  that  the  family  bond 
should  be  broken  when  most  needed,  and  that  childhood  should 
be  turned  naked  upon  the  world,  with  no  home  but  the  street,  and 
no  moral  training  but  "  the  education  and  Christianity  of  the  pave- 
ment." In  a  world  teeming  with  abundance,  and  "  wrapped 
round  with  sweet  air,  and  blessed  by  sunshine,  and  abounding  in 
knowledge,"  all  his  intelligent  creatures  should  be  permitted  to 
share  the  pleasures  and  attain  the  purposes  of  existence.  In  the 
countries  referred  to  in  the  extracts  I  have  quoted  only  about  one 
person  in  every  five  hundred  is  a  landholder.  Starving  millions, 
ignorant  of  the  pleasures,  and  untaught  in  the  virtues  of  home, 
crowded  into  stalls  and  markets,  or  turned  into  the  streets  of  their 
cities  as  beggars,  bear  sad  testimony  to  the  horrors  of  land  monop- 
oly. But  Scotland  and  Ireland,  and  the  countries  of  the  Old 
World  generally,  which  are  annually  disgorging  their  paupers  upon 
our  shores,  are  but  a  type  of  what  this  country  will  ultimately  be, 
if  the  monopoly  of  the  soil  is  allowed  to  have  its  way  ;  for  the 
same  causes  are  here  in  operation,  and  will  produce  the  same 
effects.  Famine  in  those  countries  is  not  the  result  of  over  popu- 
lation, but  of  their  landed  system.  No  country  in  Europe  has  as 
large  a  population  as  the  soil  is  capable  of  supporting  under  a  wise 
system  of  culture,  and  a  just  distribution  of  land  among  the  people. 
It  is  for  us  now  to  say  whether  starvation,  pauperism,  and  crime, 
shall  be  transplanted  from  the  Old  World  to  the  yet  unpeopled 
regions  of  the  West.  It  is  for  us,  if  we  please,  to  check  the 
monopoly  of  the  soil  and  the  exactions  of  capital  in  the  old  States, 
by  withdrawing  the  landless  laborers  of  the  country  from  their 
crushing  power,  and  at  the  same  time  giving  them  homes  and 
independence  on  the  public  lands.  We  have  it  in  our  power  to 
foreordain  the  future  lot  of  the  millions  who  are  to  draw  their 
subsistence  from  our  wide-spread  public  domain  ;  and,  I  repeat, 
we  shall  prove  recreant  to  our  high  trust  as  the  representatives  of 
the  people,  if  we  fail  to  exert  it.  Posterity  will  justly  hold  us 
answerable  for  evils  which  our  timely  action  might  have  averted, 
but  which,  in  a  few  years,  may  be   beyond   the  reach   of  remedy. 


THE   HOMESTEAD  BILL.  61 

Let  the  government,  therefore,  without  delay,  provide  homes  for 
the  landless.  Let  it  establish  the  family  in  our  untamed  forests, 
and  let  it  spread  its  parental  wing  over  it,  and  guard  it  as  it  would 
guard  the  life  of  the  Republic.  The  bill  before  us  makes  the  home 
which  it  secures  to  the  settler  free  from  execution  for  debt  for  the 
period  of  five  years.  I  regret  that  it  was  not  thought  wise  to 
make  it  thus  inalienable  forever.  Our  laws  have  abolished  im- 
prisonment for  debt  as  a  relic  of  barbarous  times.  They  have 
exempted  from  execution  certain  personal  property  of  the  debtor, 
on  the  score  of  its  absolute  necessity  to  the  maintenance  of  his 
family,  and  on  the  principle  that  the  life  of  the  debtor  is  more 
important  than  the  claim  of  the  creditor.  Let  them  go  further, 
and  exempt  that  which  is  the  most  needed  and  sacred  of  all  earthly 
interests, — the  homestead.  No  regulations  on  the  subject  of  debtor 
and  creditor  should  be  permitted  to  take  it  away.  The  unity  of 
the  family  should  be  maintained  unbroken,  till  its  inmates  are  fitted 
by  its  discipline  for  the  duties  of  life.  The  family  hearth-stone 
should  be  "  hallowed  ground."  No  vandal  legislation  should  be 
allowed  to  invade  it.  No  pretense  of  meting  out  pecuniary  justice 
as  between  man  and  man  can  justify  government  in  lacerating  the 
cherished  affections  of  the  heart,  the  fond  recollections  of  child- 
hood, which  gather  around  the  thought  of  home.  Not  humanity 
only,  but  the  cause  of  public  morality,  the  suppression  of  crimes, 
and  the  interests  of  religion,  all  plead  for  the  inviolability  of  the 
homestead. 

Mr.  Speaker,  the  bill  under  consideration  possesses  one  recom- 
mendation,' already  partially  noticed,  which  I  think  worthy  of 
special  consideration.  It  gives  encouragement  to  a  business  which, 
more  than  any  other,  promotes  the  happiness  of  those  engaged  in 
it,  whilst  it  favors  the  prosperity  of  the  whole  country.  The  life 
of  a  farmer  is  peculiarly  favorable  to  virtue  ;  and  both  individuals 
and  communities  are  generally  happy  in  proportion  as  they  are 
virtuous.  His  manners  are  simple,  and  his  nature  unsophisticated. 
If  not  oppressed  by  other  interests,  he  generally  possesses  an  abun- 
dance, without  the  drawback  of  luxury.  His  life  does  not  impose 
excessive  toil,  and  yet  it  discourages  idleness.  The  farmer  lives 
in  rustic  plenty,  remote  from  the  contagion  of  popular  vices,  and 
enjoys,  in  their  greatest  fruition,  the  blessings  of  health  and  con- 
tentment. The  very  consciousness  he  feels  of  the  utility  of  his 
calling  gives  a  pleasure  to  his  labors.  No  other  occupation,  per- 
haps, is  so  well  calculated  to  inspire  trust  in  his  Creator  and  charity 
toward  his  creatures.    The  pleasures  and  virtues  of  rural  life  have 


62  THE  HOMESTEAD  BILL. 

been  the  theme  of  poets  and  philosophers  in  all  ages.  The  tillage 
of  the  soil  was  the  primeval  employment  of  man.  Of  all  arts,  it 
is  the  most  useful  and  necessary.  It  has  justly  been  styled  the 
nursing  father  of  the  State  ;  for  in  civilized  countries  all  are  equally 
dependent  upon  it  for  the  means  of  subsistence,  since  hunger  and 
nakedness  are  universal  wants.  It  is  estimated  that  nearly  three 
fourths  of  the  labor  and  capital  of  the  country  are  employed  in 
this  single  pursuit ;  and  that  agriculturists  are  themselves  a  large 
majority  of  the  voters,  tax-payers,  and  consumers  of  all  foreign 
and  domestic  goods.  Is  not  such  an  employment  deserving  of  the 
care  of  Congress  ?  The  cultivation  of  the  soil  is  an  obligation 
imposed  upon  man  by  nature  ;  and  this  fact  alone  would  seem  to 
impose  upon  government  the  obligation  to  encourage  it  to  the  full 
extent  of  its  power.  When  so  much  is  done  by  direct  legislation 
for  other  interests,  is  it  not  fair  that  the  one  paramount  to  them  all 
should  be  aided  ?  We  expend  annually  some  seven  or  eight  mill- 
ions of  dollars  in  maintaining  our  navy,  on  the  ground  mainly  that 
the  protection  of  our  commerce  demands  it.  Our  army  costs  us 
annually  about  the  same  amount,  and  these  sums  are  drawn  chiefly 
from  the  agriculturist.  We  have  expended  vast  sums  for  harbors, 
fortifications,  breakwaters,  beacons,  light-houses,  dry-docks,  and 
coast  surveys,  with  particular  reference  to  the  growth  and  protec- 
tion of  our  commercial  interest.  With  a  view  to  the  same  object, 
we  have  made  large  grants,  both  of  land  and  money,  for  the  con- 
struction of  roads  and  canals.  We  have  been  expending  thou- 
sands of  dollars  in  the  improvement  of  our  war-steamers,  in  the 
projection  of  missiles  of  death,  and  in  maintaining  military  and 
naval  schools.  We  have  built  up  our  manufactures  by  discriminat- 
ing duties  in  their  favor,  imposed  chiefly  upon  the  producer.  We 
have  granted,  as  I  have  already  shown,  from  seventy-five  to  one 
hundred  millions  of  acres  of  the  public  lands,  in  the  shape  of  mili- 
tary bounty,  to  our  soldiers,  in  addition  to  their  lawful  stipend. 
The  public  domain  has  been  a  common  fund,  to  which  the  govern- 
ment has  resorted  for  almost  every  variety  of  object ;  but  not  a 
single  acre  has  ever  been  granted  for  the  benefit  of  agriculture. 
Such  a  phenomenon  as  an  appropriation  of  land  for  experimental 
farms,  or  agricultural  colleges,  has  never  been  known.  Is  the  cul- 
tivation of  the  soil  an  occupation  so  contemptible,  so  useless  to  the 
State,  as  not  to  demand  the  attention  of  the  government  ?  The 
encouragement  of  manufactures,  of  commerce,  and  of  other  less 
important  interests,  is  to  be  commended ;  but  is  not  the  encour- 
agement of  agriculture,  the  parent  of  them  all,  at  least  equally 
important  ? 


THE   HOMESTEAD   BILL.  63 

The  complaint  is  sometimes  made,  that  if  the  public  lands  are 
given  to  actual  settlers,  it  will  in  effect  be  taxing  the  remainder  of 
the  people  to  pay  for  their  farms,  since  the  public  revenue  will  be 
diminished  in  proportion  to  those  gifts,  and  would  of  course  have 
to  be  supplied  from  other  sources.  But  is  not  one  class  of  the 
people  taxed  for  the  benefit  of  another,  in  the  money  raised  from 
the  agriculturist  in  the  cases  I  have  mentioned  ?  The  cultivator 
has  always  been  taxed  for  the  support  of  other  interests.  I  deny, 
however,  that  the  public  revenue  would  be  diminished  by  making 
the  public  lands  free.  According  to  the  report  of  the  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury,  these  lands  can  no  longer  be  looked  to  as  a  source 
of  revenue,  at  least  for  many  years  to  come,  under  our  present 
system.  He  shows  that  our  late  bounty  land  acts  will  yet  require 
about  seventy-nine  millions  of  acres,  and  that  when  they  have 
finally  exhausted  themselves  they  will  have  diverted  from  the  treas- 
ury the  sum  of  more  than  $113,000,000.  The  warrants  issued 
under  these  acts  are  made  assignable,  and  will  be  bought  at  greatly 
reduced  prices  by  speculators,  who  will  pick  and  cull  all  the  choice 
lands,  hoard  them  up  for  their  own  selfish  advantage,  and  thus 
exclude  the  settler  from  them,  and  at  the  same  time  drive  the  gov- 
ernment from  the  market  which  it  has  thus  glutted  by  its  own 
improvident  policy.  Besides,  if  the  present  system  should  be  per- 
sisted in,  Congress  will  continue,  and  probably  multiply,  its  grants 
of  land  for  internal  improvements,  and  for  other  purposes,  thus 
making  large  additional  drains  upon  the  revenue  otherwise  deriva- 
ble from  this  source.  The  old-fashioned  project,  therefore,  of  rais- 
ing a  revenue  from  the  public  domain  is  perfectly  chimerical,  and 
must  be  abandoned.  This  is  now  very  generally  admitted.  If 
adhered  to,  the  government  would  realize  from  it  but  little,  if  any- 
thing, for  the  next  quarter  of  a  century,  beyond  the  six  or  seven 
hundred  thousand  dollars  annually  required  to  defray  the  expense 
it  occasions,  as  must  be  manifest,  I  think,  from  the  calculations  of 
the  Secretary.  It  follows,  therefore,  that  the  sums  heretofore  raised 
from  the  sales  of  the  public  lands  must  be  made  up  from  other 
sources,  whether  we  continue  or  abandon  our  present  policy.  The 
question  of  revenue  is  excluded. 

But  admitting  that  the  passage  of  this  bill  would  divert  some 
two  or  three  millions  annually  from  the  public  treasury,  for  the 
direct  benefit  of  actual  settlers,  it  still  would  not  follow  that  a  tax 
of  this  amount  would  be  imposed  upon  the  rest  of  the  community. 
Whilst  the  freedom  of  the  public  domain  to  actual  settlers  would 
be  a  measure  emphatically  for  the  benefit  of  the  poor,  all  classes 


64  THE    HOMESTEAD   BILL. 

would  share  in  the  advantages  resulting  from  it.  It  would  decrease 
poverty,  and  the  vices  and  crimes  to  which  it  gives  birth,  by  with- 
drawing its  victims  from  our  crowded  cities  and  the  slavery  of 
capital,  and  giving  them  homes  upon  the  fertile  acres  of  theWest. 
It  would  drain  pauperism  from  the  old  States,  and  thus  relieve 
them  from  the  burden  of  a  population  of  superabundant  laborers, 
whilst  enterprise,  industry,  and  wealth,  would  abound  in  the  new. 
Instead  of  diminishing,  it  would  increase  the  public  revenue.  This, 
chiefly,  is  derived  from  duties  on  foreign  imports.  The  amount  of 
revenue  thus  obtained  depends  upon  the  number  of  consumers  of 
imported  articles.  Increase  the  number  of  agricultural  producers, 
therefore,  and  you  increase  the  number  of  those  who  consume 
foreign  imports,  thus  increasing  the  revenue  derived  from  this 
source ;  because,  by  giving  a  man  a  home  upon  the  soil,  you  add 
to  his  ability  to  produce,  and  thereby  increase  his  ability  to  buy 
articles  of  necessity  or  luxury  which  pay  duty.  If  we  export 
annually  one  hundred  millions  worth  of  agricultural  products,  we 
shall  import  at  least  an  equal  amount  of  foreign  goods  subject  to 
duty.  If  our  vacant  lands  are  made  free  to  actual  settlers,  and 
we  are  thus  enabled  by  their  products  to  export  one  hundred  and 
fifty  millions,  our  imports  will  of  course  increase  in  proportion, 
and  so  will  the  receipts  at  the  custom-house.  If  revenue  be  the 
object,  here  is  its  true  source  ;  and  Congress,  instead  of  madly 
endeavoring  to  raise  money  from  the  sale  of  the  public  lands, 
should  adopt  the  policy  that  will  promote  their  greatest  productive- 
ness. Their  settlement  and  improvement  should  be  the  paramount 
object.  By  this  policy  we  shall  thus  accomplish  the  double  object 
of  giving  homes  and  employment  to  the  landless  laborers  of  the 
country,  and,  at  the  same  time,  replenishing  the  national  treasury. 
Humanity  and  the  dollar  will  go  together.  The  public  lands  in 
their  wild  state  are  yielding  nothing.  It  is  the  obvious  interest  of 
the  government,  as  I  have  before  stated,  that  they  should  be  ren- 
dered as  productive  as  possible.  Under  our  present  system,  selling 
as  we  do  from  two  to  three  millions  worth  of  land  annually,  it  will 
require  hundreds  of  years  to  dispose  of  the  whole  of  our  public  do- 
main ;  and  as  there  is  no  law  prohibiting  land  traffic,  the  sales  that 
are  made  as  often  prevent  as  promote  the  settlement  of  the  country. 
The  millions  of  acres  which  this  policy  would  continue  in  unpro- 
ductive idleness,  slowly  diminishing  in  quantity  for  centuries,  should 
all  the  time  be  sustaining  a  hardy  yeomanry,  and  filling  the  coffers 
of  the  nation  ;  and  the  government  robs  itself  of  wealth,  to  what- 
ever extent  its  policy  fails  to  secure  these  objects.     It  acts  like  the 


THE   HOMESTEAD   BILL.  65 

miser,  who  buries  his  treasure  so  that  it  can  yield  nothing.  On 
the  other  hand,  make  the  public  lands  free  on  condition  of  occu- 
pancy and  improvement,  and  the  labor  of  our  landless  and  home- 
less population,  who  have  no  capital  but  their  muscles,  will  be 
united  to  the  soil  in  the  production  of  wealth.  The  public  domain 
will  thus  be  improved  and  the  government  enriched  by  giving 
homes  and  employment  to  the  poor ;  for  it  is  as  difficult  to  raise  a 
revenue  by  taxing  its  paupers,  as  by  preventing  the  settlement  of 
its  lands.  The  treasury  will  be  filled  by  rescuing  starving  thou- 
sands from  the  jaws  of  land  monopoly,  and  imparting  to  them 
happiness  and  independence.  The  degraded  vassal  of  the  rich, 
who  is  now  confined  to  exhausting  labor  for  a  mere  pittance  upon 
which  to  subsist,  or 

"  Who  begs  a  brother  of  the  earth 
To  give  hirn  leave  to  toil," 

will  find  a  home  in  the  West ;  and,  stimulated  by  the  favor  of  the 
government,  the  desire  for  independence,  and  the  ties  of  the  family, 
the  wilderness  will  be  converted  into  smiling  landscapes,  and  wealth 
poured  into  the  nation's  lap.  Humanity  to  the  poor  thus  unites 
with  the  interest  of  the  nation  in  making  the  public  domain  free  to 
those  who  so  much  need  it ;  taking  gaunt  poverty  into  the  fatherly 
keeping  of  the  government,  and  giving  it  the  home  of  which  land 
monopoly  has  deprived  it ;  administering  to  it  the  blessings  of  exist- 
ence, and  at  the  same  time  using  it  as  an  instrumentality  for  build- 
ing up  the  prosperity  and  wealth  of  the  Republic.  Sir,  I  ask 
gentlemen  if  these  things  are  not  so  ?  I  ask  those  who  mean  to 
oppose  this  policy  if  any  wiser  or  better  one  can  be  proposed  with 
respect  to  our  public  lands  ?  Some  disposition  of  them  must  be 
made.  By  some  method  or  other  they  should  be  rendered  a  source 
of  agricultural  and  financial  wealth.  The  administration  of  them 
is  costing  us  annually  nearly  three  quarters  of  a  million  of  dollars 
under  our  present  system.  The  government,  as  I  have  shown  by 
reference  to  the  late  treasury  report,  has  already  practically  repu- 
diated the  pledge  which  it  made  of  these  lands  in  1847  for  the 
payment  of  our  public  debt.  The  management  of  them,  I  repeat, 
presses  upon  us  as  a  serious,  practical  question  ;  and  I  call  upon 
those  who  denounce  this  measure  to  meet  the  views  I  have  ad- 
vanced fairly,  and,  if  they  are  untenable,  to  bring  forward  some 
plan  for  disposing  of  our  public  domain  more  conducive  to  the 
interest  of  the  whole  country,  and  more  likely  to  command  the 
favor  of  a  majority  of  Congress. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  will  detain  the  House  no  longer.    "What  may  be 


6Q  THE    HOMESTEAD   BILL. 

the  ultimate  fate  of  this  bill  I  cannot  pretend  to  decide.  That 
some  measure,  however,  substantially  embodying  its  provisions, 
Avill  receive  the  sanction  of  Congress,  I  have  no  doubt.  This  may 
not  happen  at  the  present  session,  but  its  postponement  cannot  be 
far  in  the  future.  The  policy  of  making  the  public  lands  free  will 
prevail,  because,  as  I  believe,  the  people  have  willed  it,  and  their 
will  cannot  return  to  them  void.  It  will  prevail,  because  it  appeals 
to  the  American  pocket,  and  at  the  same  time  to  the  American 
heart.  It  will  prevail,  because,  like  the  question  of  cheap  postage, 
it  comes  home  to  the  business  and  bosoms  of  the  million,  and  lays 
humanity  under  contribution  to  its  success.  It  will  prevail,  because 
it  appeals  to  the  democratic  idea  of  the  nation,  and  promises  to 
make  effective  the  right  of  the  people  to  "  life,  liberty,  and  the  pur- 
suit of  happiness."  Great  names,  eminent  statesmen,  are  rang- 
ing themselves  among  its  advocates  ;  but  my  reliance  is  upon  the 
intelligence  and  integrity  of  the  people,  —  upon  the  agricultural, 
mechanical,  and  laboring  masses  of  the  country.  Politicians  may 
denounce  and  revile  it ;  they  may  brand  it  as  "  agrarianism,"  and 
"  demagogism,"  but  they  will  be  powerless  to  stay  its  progress,  or 
prevent  its  final  triumph.  It  is  incarnate  in  the  popular  heart ;  it 
rests  upon  the  immutable  principles  of  justice  ;  it  forms  an  impor- 
tant part  of  the  great  reform  movement  of  the  age,  —  a  link  in  the 
chain  of  the  world's  progress ;  it  is  in  harmony  with  "  the  power 
that  moves  the  stars,  and  heaves  the  pulses  of  the  deep." 


THE 

STRENGTH  AND   WEAKNESS   OF   THE   SLAVE 

POWER  — THE    DUTY   OF   ANTI-SLAVERY   MEN. 

DELIVERED   IN  CINCINNATI,  APRIL  27,  1852. 

[This  speech,  delivered  a  few  weeks  before  the  National  Conventions  of  the  Whig  and 
Democratic  parties  for  1852  were  held,  fitly  deals  with  these  organizations,  and  arraigns 
them  as  alike  the  allies  of  slavery.  Its  picture  of  the  Free  and  Slave  Power  of  the  na- 
tion is  well  drawn,  while  its  discussion  of  the  morality  of  political  action,  and  the  rela- 
tions of  the  Church  to  Slavery,  give  it  an  exceptional  character  as  a  political  speech.] 

Mr.  President, — In  obedience  to  the  call  of  our  anti-slavery 
friends  in  this  city,  we  have  assembled  from  various  sections  of  the 
country  to  consider  what  more  can  be  done  for  the  three  millions 
of  slaves  in  these  United  States  ;  what  new  labors  and  sacrifices 
the  crisis  demands  at  our  hands  ;  and  we  desire,  at  all  events,  to 
lift  up  our  voices  in  continued  rebuke  of  the  transcendent  and  over- 
shadowing iniquity  of  this  nation. 

The  free  power  of  the  United  States  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
slave  power  on  the  other,  are  the  parties  to  the  great  struggle  in 
which  we  are  engaged ;  and  I  propose,  in  the  outset,  to  glance  at 
the  position  and  relative  strength  of  these  contending  forces,  and 
thence  to  deduce  such  conclusions  as  facts  may  warrant,  bearing 
upon  the  question  of  present  duty. 

What  do  we  understand  by  the  slave  power  of  this  country  ? 
It  is  embodied,  primarily,  in  the  slaveholders  of  the  country, 
numbering,  say  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand,  making  a  liberal 
estimate,  and  many  of  these  are  women  and  minors.  The  entire 
white  population  of  the  slave  States,  according  to  the  late  census, 
is  six  millions  one  hundred  and  sixty-nine  thousand  four  hun- 
dred and  thirty-eight.  The  slaveholders,  therefore,  constitute  only 
about  one  twenty -fifth  of  this  number,  or  in  other  words,  for  every 
slaveholder  there  are  twenty-five  non-slaveholders,  or  twenty-four 
twenty-fifths  of  the  people  having  no  direct  connection  with  slav- 
ery. If  we  include  the  whole  population  of  the  South,  white  and 
colored,  bond  and  free,  the  slaveholders  will  only  amount  to 
about  one  fortieth  of  the  aggregate,  thirty-nine  fortieths  of  the 
whole  being  non-slaveholders.  If  we  take  into  the  calculation  the 
entire  present  population  of  the  Union,  setting  it  down  in  round 


68       STRENGTH  AND  WEAKNESS   OE  THE   SLAVE  POWER. 

numbers  at  twenty-five  millions  (which  cannot  be  very  far  from  the 
truth),  the  slaveholders  will  constitute  only  the  one  hundredth  part 
of  the  same,  leaving  ninety-nine  hundredths  non-slaveholders,  and 
deeply  interested,  socially,  morally,  and  politically,  in  the  over- 
throw of  the  peculiar  institution. 

Here  then,  in  this  small  fraction  of  the  people  of  the  country,  the 
slave  power  is  lodged.  This  is  the  terrible  presence  before  which 
our  politicians  and  priests  bend  their  cowardly  backs,  and  seem- 
ingly glory  in  the  abjectness  of  their  humiliation.  I  am  now  talk- 
ing about  the  weakness,  the  apparent  insignificance  of  this  wicked 
and  domineering  oligarchy.  I  shall  speak  of  its  strength  presently. 
Look,  if  you  please,  at  the  forces  which  stand  opposed  to  this  squad 
of  despots.  First,  I  mention  the  three  millions  and  more  whom 
they  hold  in  bondage,  and  who,  of  course,  are  opposed  from  the 
very  depths  of  their  hearts  to  the  system  under  which  they  suffer. 
Denied  that  principle  of  everlasting  justice,  a  fair  day's  wages  for 
a  fair  day's  work,  sold  like  merchandise  to  the  highest  bidder,  de- 
spoiled of  their  dearest  rights  and  the  holiest  relations  of  life,  and 
plundered  even  of  their  humanity  by  law,  is  it  not  inevitable  that 
they  are  brooding  in  secret  over  their  wrongs,  and  nursing  in  their 
bosoms  long-cherished,  deep-seated,  and  implacable  hatred  of  the 
rule  of  their  tyrants  ?  Let  no  man  regard  lightly,  either  the  moral 
or  physical  power  of  such  a  people ;  for  every  ray  of  light  which 
dawns  upon  their  minds,  every  kindling  passion  which  fires  their 
hearts,  is  the  sure  prophecy 'of  their  deliverance.  Well  may  the 
slaveholder  tremble,  when  he  reflects  that  "  God  is  just,  and  that 
his  justice  cannot  sleep  forever." 

Next,  let  us  remember,  that  these  slaveholders  have  to  struggle 
against  a  rapidly  augmenting  dislike  of  their  institution  among  the 
millions  of  their  own  race  in  the  South,  who  hold  no  slaves.  Mul- 
titudes of  these  feel  that  they  are  crushed  to  the  earth  by  this 
heartless  aristocracy,  degraded  to  a  condition  which  slaves  them- 
selves need  not  envy,  and  that  all  hope  of  bettering  their  lot  is 
denied  them,  so  long  as  the  reigning  order  of  things  continues. 
This  hostility  to  slavery  will  increase  just  in  proportion  as  its 
hands  are  strengthened  and  its  exactions  multiplied,  thus  has- 
tening a  fearful  crisis,  by  the  action  of  causes  that  must  inevitably 
produce  it,  were  the  millions  in  bondage  to  continue  quiet  and 
submissive.  We  have  good  reasons  for  believing  that  at  this  time 
there  are  thousands  among  the  non-slaveholders  South,  not  only 
smarting  under  the  relentless  power  of  slavery,  and  meditating 
schemes  of  resistance,  but  looking  forward  with  anxious  hopes  to 


STRENGTH  AND  WEAKNESS   OF   THE   SLAVE  POWER.       69 

some  movement  in  the  free  States  which  will  embolden  them  to 
stand  up  in  the  midst  of  their  oppressors,  and  make  their  power 
felt  in  the  politics  of  the  country. 

Again,  there  is  opposed  to  the  handful  of  slaveholders  a  growing 
anti-slavery  sentiment  among  the  fourteen  millions  of  people  in  the 
free  States.  It  finds  its  life  in  the  truths  of  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence, the  traditions  and  example  of  our  political  fathers,  and 
the  teachings  of  our  Saviour  and  his  Apostles.  It  will  gradually 
and  finally  penetrate  all  hearts,  and  pervade  all  minds  in  the  North. 
This,  in  fact,  is  the  great  dread  of  the  slaveholder  and  the  dough- 
face, notwithstanding  the  pretended  "  finality  "  of  their  compro- 
mises. They  lack  faith  in  their  own  devices.  The  spirit  of  free- 
dom, "  crushed  to  earth  "  by  external  forces,  "  will  rise  again,"  and 
in  more  effectual  ways  make  itself  understood.  Even  now,  in  this 
dark  and  despondent  hour  of  anti-slavery  progress,  I  doubt  not  it 
is  silently  darting  its  light  into  the  minds  of  the  multitude,  soften- 
ing the  inhumanity  of  their  hearts,  quickening  the  irinsensibility 
into  resolves,  and  thus  preparing  the  ground  for  a  rich  harvest  for 
freedom  in  future  years. 

Lastly,  the  voice  of  the  civilized  world  is  against  slavery.  Pub- 
lic opinion,  according  to  Mr.  Webster,  is  the  strongest  power  on 
earth.  "  We  think,"  says  he,  "  that  nothing  is  strong  enough  to 
stand  before  autocratic,  monarchical,  or  despotic  power.  There 
is  something  strong  enough,  quite  strong  enough,  and  if  properly 
exerted  will  prove  itself  so,  and  that  is  the  power  of  intelligent  pub- 
lic opinion  in  all  the  nations  of  the  earth.  There  is  not  a  monarch 
on  earth  whose  throne  is  not  liable  to  be  shaken  to  its  foundations 
by  the  progress  of  opinion,  and  the  sentiment  of  the  just  and  intel- 
ligent part  of  the  community."  This  terrible  power  is  arrayed 
against  the  slaveholders,  and  we  need  not  wonder  at  their  alarm. 
It  should  not  surprise  us  that  they  labor  so  unremittingly  to  guard 
against  domestic  foes,  when  the  moral  power  of  the  world  is  threat- 
ening to  shake  their  despotic  power  to  its  foundations.  A  hostile  in- 
fluence is  wafted  to  our  shores  upon  every  gale  from  abroad.  And 
the  great  fountain  and  source  of  opinion,  the  literature  of  the  world, 
is  against  them.  The  poets,  orators,  philosophers,  historians,  and 
moralists  of  every  civilized  country,  unite  in  one  loud  chorus  against 
the  enslavement  of  their  race.  And  who  can  measure  the  power 
of  the  world's  literature,  now  so  wonderfully  multiplying  itself  in 
the  minds  of  the  million  by  methods  unknown  to  the  past  ?  Who 
can  calculate  the  influence  of  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  "  as  a  mission- 
ary of  anti-slavery  reform,  going  forth  "  into  all  the  world  "  as  the 


70      STRENGTH  AND   WEAKNESS   OF   THE  SLAVE   POWER. 

harbinger  of  deliverance  to  the  African  race  ?  "  The  pen,"  says 
Dr.  Channing,  "  is  mightier  than  the  sword,"  and  "  the  press  is  the 
mightiest  engine  ever  set  in  motion  by  man."  All  the  great  forces 
of  the  world  are  in  league  with  the  free  power  of  the  country,  and 
their  warfare  against  the  lords  of  the  lash  can  only  end  with  the 
last  vestige  of  their  rule  in  the  United  States. 

But  let  us  turn  now  to  the  other  side  of  the  pictui'e,  and  con- 
template the  strength  of  the  slave  power,  judged  by  what  we  know 
of  its  actual  achievements.  The  slaveholders,  as  we  have  seen, 
numbering  only  one  twenty-fifth  of  their  white  brethren  of  the 
South,  one  fortieth  of  the  entire  population  of  the  South,  and  one 
hundredth  part  of  that  of  the  Union,  are  yet  the  real  sovereigns  in 
this  Republic.  The  powers  of  the  government  are  in  their  keeping, 
and  they  determine  all  things  according  to  the  counsels  of  their  own 
will.  They  say  to  the  politician  of  the  North  "  Go,  and  he  goeth  ;  " 
to  the  Northern  priest,  "  Do  this,  and  he  doeth  it."  They  lay  their 
mesmeric  hands  upon  the  moral  pulse  of  the  nation,  and  it  ceases 
to  beat.  Nothing  that  is  earthly  can  stand  before  the  dread  author- 
ity of  these  men.  They  are  the  reigning  lords  and  masters  of  the 
people,  white  and  black.  Look  at  the  facts.  They  hold  in  the 
most  galling  bondage  three  millions  of  their  fellow-creatures,  being 
more  than  twelve  times  their  own  number.  They  keep  in  subjec- 
tion and  comparative  slavery  more  than  six  millions  of  their  own 
race  in  the  South,  who  dare  not  even  murmur  at  their  lot.  They 
lord  it  over  fourteen  millions  of  people  in  the  free  States,  subsidiz- 
ing their  leaders  in  Church  and  State,  debauching  the  public  sen- 
timent of  the  country,  and  pragmatically  announcing  and  then  en- 
forcing, the  conditions  upon  which  the  Union  shall  be  preserved. 
They  determine  who  shall  be  our  Presidents  and  Vice-Presidents ; 
who  shall  be  the  Speakers  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  and  the 
presiding  officers  of  the  Senate  ;  who  shall  stand  at  the  head  of  the 
important  committees  of  both  houses,  and  how  those  committees 
shall  be  constituted,  all  with  special  reference  to  the  slave  interest. 
They  secure  to  themselves  or  to  their  Northern  slaves  the  monopoly 
of  all  the  important  offices  of  the  government,  of  the  judiciary,  the 
army,  the  navy,  and  our  foreign  diplomacy,  hoisting  their  black 
flag  in  distant  nations  of  the  earth.  They  rifle  the  mails  of  the 
United  States,  and  decide  what  shall  and  what  shall  not  be  con- 
veyed by  them  under  the  impudent  surveillance  which  they  thus 
set  up  with  impunity.  They  imprison  hundreds  of  our  colored 
freemen  from  the  North  and  sell  them  into  perpetual  slavery,  by  a 
law  lower  than  the  Constitution,  for  the  crime  of  being  found  in 


STRENGTH   AND   WEAKNESS   OF  THE   SLAVE   POWER.      71 

Southern  ports  in  the  prosecution  of  their  lawful  business  ;  and  with 
a  mob  at  their  heels  they  defy  the  Federal  Government  to  bring  the 
constitutionality  of  their  misdeeds  before  the  courts  of  the  country. 
They  nationalize  slavery  by  compelling  us  to  support  it  in  the  Dis- 
trict of  Columbia,  to  aid  in  carrying  on  the  coastwise  slave-trade, 
and  to  conform  our  policy  in  all  things  to  the  principle  that  slavery 
is  to  be  protected  "  wherever  our  flag  floats."  They  involve  the 
nation  in  a  Florida  War,  and  a  second  edition  of  the  same,  at  a  final 
cost  of  some  forty  millions  of  dollars,  and  send  our  army  and  its 
blood-hound  auxiliaries  howling  on  the  chase  of  unoffending  Semi- 
nole Indians,  doomed  to  expulsion  or  extermination  in  order  that 
slaveholding  civilization  and  Christianity  may  be  extended  into 
regions  from  which  the  religion  of  savages  would  exclude  them. 
They  send  their  minions  into  Texas  while  yet  a  province  of  Mexico, 
who  establish  slavery  there  in  violation  of  Mexican  law  to  which 
they  had  become  subject ;  and  then,  in  violation  of  their  allegiance 
to  the  United  States,  raise  the  standard  of  revolt,  and  assert  their 
independence  by  what  Dr.  Channing  justly  styles  "  the  robbery  of 
a  realm ; "  and  when  their  work  has  been  consummated  by  the 
help  or  connivance  of  the  United  States,  Texas,  a  whole  empire  of 
slavery,  is  annexed  to  this  country  through  the  machinery  of  the 
Whig  and  Democratic  parties. 

Instigated  by  a  still  growing  lust  for  slave  domination  they 
drive  the  government  into  a  war  with  Mexico  for  the  avowed  pur- 
pose of  acquiring  more  slave  territory ;  and  when  the  war  termi- 
nates, at  a  cost  of  many  thousands  of  lives,  and  hundreds  of  millions 
of  money,  they  assert  their  own  will  and  pleasure  in -the  disposition 
of  the  spoils  of  conquest.  By  threats  to  dissolve  the  Union,  and 
to  use  the  pistol  and  the  bowie-knife,  they  induce  Northern  mem- 
bers of  Congress  to  unite  with  them  in  dismembering  New  Mexico, 
while  begging  for  admission  as  a  free  State,  thus  cursing  with  the 
blight  of  slavery  eighty  thousand  square  miles  of  soil  that  was  free. 
They  force  these  Northern  members  to  give  Texan  slaveholders  ten 
millions  of  dollars  besides,  to  which  they  have  not  even  the  sem- 
blance of  a  title.  They  exact  from  them  a  law  of  Congress  by 
which  slavery  may  be  extended  over  all  our  Territories,  stipulating 
in  advance  that  as  many  slave  States  as  may  be  carved  out  of  them 
shall  be  admitted  into  the  Union  whenever  they  shall  make  applica- 
tion. They  exact  another  law  by  which  the  people  of  the  free 
States  are  made  their  constables  and  slave-catchers,  bound  as  "  good 
citizens  "  to  engage  in  a  business  at  which  their  humanity  must 
revolt ;  which  makes  the  slave  claimant  a  witness  in  his  own  case, 


72     STRENGTH  AND  WEAKNESS   OF   THE   SLAVE   POWER. 

and  declares  that  his  ex-parte,  interested  testimony  shall  be  "  final 
and  conclusive  ;"  which  tramples  upon  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus, 
and  denies  a  trial  by  jury  in  a  case  involving  a  man's  liberty,  dearer 
than  life ;  which  taxes  us  all  to  pay  the  expense  of  sending  men 
into  slavery  by  its  summary  process,  and  bribes  men  to  carry  out 
its  diabolical  purpose ;  and  which  punishes,  by  fine  and  imprison- 
ment, the  holiest  duties  of  religion  to  our  fellow-men. 

They  stand  up  in  the  Congress  of  the  United  States,  and  with 
characteristic  audacity  denounce  Jefferson  as  a  sophist,  the  Decla- 
ration of  Independence  as  a  humbug,  and  the  ballot-box  as  a  curse 
to  the  country.  They  say  to  us,  "  You  may  think  slavery  an  evil, 
but  keep  your  thoughts  to  yourselves."  They  not  only  make  war 
upon  the  right  of  free  speech,  but  they  demand  an  expurgated  lit- 
erature, defiling  the  school-books  of  our  youth,  and  even  forcing 
Northern  genius  to  mutilate  the  inspired  thoughts  of  its  own 
brain. 

They  prostitute  religion  itself  to  the  nefarious  work  of  upholding 
their  unrighteous  power,  hiding  their  great  sin  behind  the  commu- 
nion-table, and  compelling  Northern  Christians  to  recognize  them 
as  brothers  in  the  Church,  whilst  lifting  their  sacrilegious  hands  to 
partake  "  unworthily  "  of  the  emblems  of  Christ's  body  and  blood. 
They  bring  into  their  service  the  most  gifted  and  influential  leaders 
of  the  great  religious  denominations  of  the  free  States,  who  teach 
the  people  that  there  is  no  higher  law  than  an  act  of  Congress 
which,  in  unmitigated  atrocity,  stands  without  a  parallel  in  the 
annals  of  any  civilized  people  on  earth.  They  meet  Northern 
members  of  Congress  in  Washington,  fresh  from  their  constituents, 
elected  through  their  anti-slavery  pledges,  and  absolutely  commit- 
ted to  the  interests  of  freedom ;  they  take  them  by  the  hand,  look 
them  in  the  eye,  pour  into  their  ears  their  sweet  and  seductive  ac- 
cents, and  melt  their  hearts  with  the  fervent  heat  of  Southern  love, 
and  in  a  moment,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  these  same  Northern 
men  are  changed :  old  things  have  passed  away,  and  they  are  born 
into  a  new  life,  endowed  with  new  faculties,  new  desires,  and  new 
affections.  By  some  strange  law,  —  perhaps  Mr.  Webster's  law 
of  "  Physical  Geography,"  —  their  faces  are  turned  towards  the 
tropics,  and  they  remember  the  North  no  more  forever. 

See  how  they  approach  the  great  intellectual  giant  of  Massachu- 
setts, hold  him  in  the  hollow  of  their  hands,  and  mould  him  and 
knead  him  into  just  such  form  as  they  please  ;  now  by  threats,  now 
by  blandishments  and  caresses,  bringing  him  captive  to  their  will, 
while  secretly  rejoicing  over  his  heaven-daring  apostasy  to  truth, 


STRENGTH  AND  WEAKNESS   OF  THE  SLAVE  POWER.     73 

humanity,  and  God.  No  mere  politician  can  face  the  slaveholders 
and  live.  The  slightest  resistance  to  their  sovereign  will  is  enough 
to  expel  him  forthwith  from  the  paradise  of  office  and  power, 
whether  he  be  a  Van  Buren,  a  Benton,  or  some  humbler  victim  of 
their  wrath.  We  sometimes  hear  it  said  that  the  Almighty  dollar 
is  the  God  of  the  American  people.  Do  we  not  insult  the  preroga- 
tives of  the  slaveholder  when  we  set  up  any  such  rival  ?  How 
many  men  can  we  boast,  either  in  Church  or  State,  who  dare  de- 
clare their  opposition  frankly  and  fearlessly  to  the  great  evil  of  the 
nation  ?  How  many  men  in  the  last  Congress  had  the  courage  to 
defy  its  will  ?  Mr.  President,  I  repeat  it,  the  power  of  the  slave- 
holders has  never  been  greater  than  at  this  moment.  At  this 
very  hour,  while  they  are  singing  the  siren  song  of  peace  to  the 
country,  they  are  secretly  toiling  and  scheming  as  never  before  to 
impart  new  life  and  energy  to  their  system.  By  various  influ- 
ences, and  through  multiplied  instrumentalities,  they  are  instilling 
into  the  general  mind  a  deeper  and  deeper  hatred  of  the  colored 
race  ;  cramming  down  our  throats  that  most  wicked  and  gigantic 
lie,  that  our  American  prejudices  are  unconquerable,  even  by  the 
power  of  Christianity,  and  that  these  prejudices  are  therefore  to 
be  the  Divinity  that  shall  guide  us ;  persuading  us  not  only  to  send 
back  their  fugitives  at  our  own  cost,  but  to  get  up  an  "  Ebony  " 
line  of  steamers,  and  set  apart  the  fourth  installment  of  the  surplus 
revenue,  for  the  purpose  of  transporting  our  "  debased  and  de- 
graded "  free  blacks  to  Africa  to  Christianize  that  Continent,  and 
"  save  the  Union "  by  eternizing  slavery  in  this ;  issuing  their 
mandates  to  the  governors,  and  judges,  and  politicians  of  the 
so-called  free  States,  who  dutifully  proceed  to  lecture  the  people 
on  the  blessings  of  the  Compromise  Measures,  the  necessity  of  re- 
garding them  as  a  finality,  the  sublime  beauties  of  slave-catching, 
the  philanthropy  of  expatriating  the  black  race,  and  the  divine 
agency  of  the  American  Colonization  Society  in  carrying  forward 
the  blessed  work,  —  to  all  which  doctrines  the  people  seem  to  lend 
a  willing  and  reverent  ear,  especially  in  the  hopeful  State  from 
which  I  hail. 

Would  that  I  could  draw  an  adequate  picture  of  the  slave  power, 
and  show  you  how  it  subordinates  every  other  power  in  the  nation 
to  its  lawless  rule.  It  pervades  and  governs  every  interest.  In  the 
language  of  John  Quincy  Adams,  "the  propagation,  preservation, 
and  perpetuation  of  slavery  is  the  vital  and  animating  spirit  of  the 
National  Government."  We  cannot  escape  its  presence  without 
forsaking  the  country.     We  inhale  it  at  every  breath,  and  imbibe 


74      STRENGTH   AND   WEAKNESS   OF  THE  SLAVE   POWER. 

it  at  every  pore.  We  "  live,  and  move,  and  have  our  being  "  in 
the  midst  of  this  frightful  moral  pestilence,  which  is  hovering  like 
a  dark  cloud  over  the  land,  and  menacing  the  very  life  of  the 
Republic. 

•And  now,  does  any  one  ask  how  we  shall  successfully  wage 
war  against  this  monster  power?  I  answer,  that  American  politics 
and  American  religion  are  the  bulwarks  which  support  it,  and  that 
we  must  attack  them.  If  we  do  this  wisely  and  perseveringly,  we 
shall  succeed.  We  need  no  new  weapons,  but  only  a  faithful  use 
of  those  we  already  possess,  in  more  direct  assaults  upon  these 
strongholds  of  the  enemy.  And  first  allow  me  to  refer  to  the 
political  organizations  of  the  country. 

There  was  once  a  time  when  the  Whig  and  Democratic  parties 
were  arrayed  against  each  other  upon  certain  tolerably  well  defined 
political  issues.  That  time  is  past.  These  issues  are  obsolete. 
Who  now  thinks  it  worth  while  to  talk  about  a  Bank  of  the  United 
States  ?  Why  a  Whig  who  would  publicly  advocate,  or  a  Democrat 
who  would  oppose  such  an  institution,  would  run  no  small  hazard 
of  being  set  down  as  crazy  by  all  parties.  It  has  passed  away,  and 
with  it  one  of  the  standards  of  party  orthodoxy.  And  is  not  the 
same  perfectly  true  of  the  old  question  of  Land  Distribution  ?  It 
has  been  thrust  aside  by  the  force  of  circumstances  which  no  party 
could  control,  whilst  the  beneficent  doctrine  of  Land  Reform  is 
looming  up  in  the  not  distant  future  as  the  day-star  of  hope  to  mill- 
ions who  have  not  known  the  joys  of  home.  Whigs  and  Demo- 
crats are  favoring  this  doctrine,  and  Whigs  and  Democrats  are 
against  it ;  but  the  already  manifested  will  of  the  people  has  de- 
clared its  triumph.  Here  then  has  disappeared  another  ear-mark 
by  which  Whiggery  and  Democracy  were  once  identified.  And  can 
any  man  define  the  difference  between  these  parties  at  this  time 
on  the  question  of  River  and  Harbor  Improvements  ?  Both  admit 
the  power  of  Congress  to  appropriate  money  for  those  improve- 
ments, and  nobody  of  any  party  denies  that  this  power,  like  every 
other,  may  be  abused.  The  real  question  is  one  of  expediency, 
and  upon  this  the  widest  differences  of  opinion  abound  among  mem- 
bers of  the  same  party.  The  old  internal  improvement  quarrel 
has  therefore  been  superseded,  and  Whigs  and  Democrats,  so  far 
as  that  is  concerned,  should  shake  hands  and  forget  that  they  have 
ever  been  at  war.  Lastly,  I  ask  if  the  Tariff  Question,  in  the  form 
in  which  it  originally  divided  the  people,  is  not  as  irrecoverably  ob- 
solete as  that  of  a  bank  ?  Nobody  imagines  that  this  government 
will  return  to  the  old-fashioned  high  tariff  policy  of  1828,  or  1842. 


STRENGTH   AND   WEAKNESS    OF  THE    SLAVE   POWER.     75 

The  spirit  of  the  age,  the  policy  of  the  leading  nations  of  the  earth, 
and  the  emphatic  voice  of  the  American  people,  are  against  it. 
The  Whigs  themselves,  well  knowing  this,  do  not  ask  it.  Presi- 
dent Fillmore,  in  his  first  annual  message,  says  "  a  high  tariff 
can  never  be  permanent.  It  will  cause  dissatisfaction  and  will  be 
changed.  It  excludes  competition,  and  thereby  invites  the  invest- 
ment of  capital  in  manufactures  to  such  excess,  that  when  changed 
it  brings  distress,  bankruptcy,  and  ruin,  upon  all  who  have  been 
misled  by  its  faithless  protection."  And  Mr.  Clay  himself,  in  the 
last  Congress,  publicly  avowed  that  he  desired  no  change  in  the 
"  essential  provisions"  of  the  tariff  of  1846.  The  question,  I  re- 
peat, has  been  disposed  of,  and  is  no  longer  in  the  bill  of  our  polit- 
ical fare. 

I  respectfully  ask  then  if  these  parties  have  not  outlived  the 
questions  which  called  them  into  being,  and  organized  their  forces 
under  their  early  champions  ?  They  are  the  surviving  effects  of 
causes  now  no  longer  operative,  and  have  therefore  no  apology 
for  their  existence,  thus  lengthened  out  bevond  its  time,  save  the 
traditionary  reverence  of  their  votaries  for  names  under  which 
they  once  did  battle.  They  are  at  this  time  pitted  against  each 
other  in  a  mere  scramble  for  place  and  power,  however  anxious 
their  leaders  may  be  to  hide  the  fact  from  the  eyes  of  the  masses. 

But  if  I  am  right  in  this,  then  I  have  been  wrong  in  dignifying 
these  organizations  as  parties.  They  are  factions,  the  great  bane 
of  republics,  and  every  lover  of  his  country  should  labor  for  their 
overthrow.  What  is  a  faction  ?  "  By  a  faction,"  says  James 
Madison,  "  I  understand  a  number  of  citizens,  whether  amounting 
to  a  minority  or  majority  of  the  whole,  who  are  united  and  actuated 
by  some  common  impulse  of  passion  or  of  interest,  adverse  to  the 
rights  of  other  citizens,  or  to  the  permanent  and  aggregate  interests 
of  the  community."  Apply  this  definition  to  these  organizations, 
headed  by  ambitious  and  mercenary  leaders,  striving  neither  for 
the  establishment  nor  the  overthrow  of  political  measures,  but  held 
together  by  a  common  love  of  the  spoils  as  their  sole  bond  of  union, 
and  say  whether  I  am  not  right  in  branding  them  as  factions, 
which  should  be  destroyed  ?  Why  should  they  longer  curse  the 
Hepublic  by  their  diabolical  strife  ?  For  their  strife  is  diabolical. 
I  raise  no  clamor  against  parties.  I  deny  not  their  use  in  a  free 
country ;  but  I  doubt  whether  the  champions  of  slavery  ever  con- 
cocted a  more  cunningly  devised  scheme  for  extending  and  fortify- 
ing its  power  than  that  of  instilling  into  the  minds  of  the  people 
the  delusion  that  these  factions  are  demanded  by  the  public  good. 


76     STRENGTH   AND   WEAKNESS   OF   THE   SLAVE   POWER. 

I  have  already  briefly  recited  some  of  the  achievements  of  the 
slave  power.  I  have  shown  you,  by  actual  facts,  that  it  is  the 
supreme  power  in  the  nation  ;  and  it  has  maintained  its  supremacy 
for  years  past  through  the  agency  of  these  heartless  factions.  Sub- 
mission to  its  behests  in  all  things  is  the  appointed  means  of  ob- 
taining power,  the  sole  and  openly  avowed  condition  upon  which 
their  existence  can  be  continued.  Who  will  dare  deny  this? 
Who  is  there  so  blind  as  not  to  see  that  existing  party  associations 
can  only  be  maintained  by  an  unqualified  surrender  of  the  interests 
of  freedom  ? 

Suppose  Northern  Whigs  and  Democrats,  in  the  national  con- 
ventions soon  to  be  held,  should  insist  upon  putting  into  their  plat- 
forms resolutions  declaring  that  Congress  should  abolish  slavery  in 
the  District  of  Columbia,  or  the  slave-trade  coastwise,  or  prevent 
the  extension  of  slavery  into  our  Territories,  or  that  in  general 
terms  the  Federal  Government  should  relieve  itself  from  all  respon- 
sibility for  its  support,  so  far  as  it  constitutionally  may,  leaving  it 
a  State  institution,  dependent  upon  State  law.  Does  not  everybody 
know  that  this  would  be  to  sound  the  death-knell  of  these  organ- 
izations? But  suppose  in  those  conventions  Southern  Whigs  and 
Democrats  should  insist  upon  platforms  affirming  directly  the 
opposite  doctrines,  that  slavery  in  the  District  and  the  trade  coast- 
wise shall  be  perpetual,  that  slavery  maybe  carried  into  our  Terri- 
tories, out  of  which  more  slave  States  may  be  formed,  and  that  the 
Federal  Government  shall  spread  over  it  its  flag  on  land  and  sea, 
and  by  every  practicable  means  aid  the  slave  masters  in  sustaining 
and  strengthening  their  peculiar  institution  ;  does  any  sane  man 
doubt  that  Northern  Whigs  and  Democrats  would  succumb,  in 
order  to  save  their  organizations  and  hold  on  to  the  spoils  ?  Most 
assuredly  they  would  do  it,  as  whoever  lives  till  these  conventions 
assemble  will  see.  They  have  already  done  it,  by  the  adoption  of 
the  Compromise  Measures,  and  are  preparing  to  do  so  again,  in  all 
par.s  of  the  North,  by  declaring  those  measures  a  finality.  North- 
ern Whigs  and  Democrats  always  pay  the  drafts  of  the.  slave- 
holders at  sight,  whatever  the  amount  may  be.  Of  course,  I 
would  not  speak  disparagingly  here  of  the  great  body  of  the  people. 
I  refer  to  regular  politicians,  and  that  strange  devil-worship  of 
party  by  which  well-meaning  men  are  induced  to  throw  their 
whole  weight  on  the  wrong  side  of  this  great  question.  The  mass 
of  the  people  in  the  North,  of  all  parties,  dislike  slavery.  Their 
consciences  condemn  it.  They  cannot  believe  it  right  to  murder 
the  intellect  and  affections  of  three  millions  of  their  race,   deny 


STRENGTH   AND  WEAKNESS   OF   THE   SLAVE   POWER.     77 

them  the  family,  sunder  their  dearest  ties,  rob  them  of  the  fruits  of 
their  toil,  and  sink  their  humanity  into  brutes.  They  are  ashamed 
not  to  admit  that  they  think  it  an  anomaly  in  our  government,  and 
that  they  would  rejoice  to  see  it  abolished,  and  grieve  to  see  its 
power  augmented.  These  are  the  sentiments  of  all  fair-minded 
men  ;  but,  anchored  in  the  toils  of  their  leaders,  they  complacently 
say,  "  We  believe  the  government  will  be  better  administered  by 
our  party  than  by  our  opponents ;  we  have  confidence  in  our  pub- 
lic men ;  and  if  we  divide  on  the  slavery  question  it  will  only 
insure  the  triumph  of  our  foes,  who  are  at  least  as  pro-slavery  as 
ourselves.  We  therefore  think  it  wisest  to  keep  up  our  party,  and 
postpone,  for  the  time,  if  not  indefinitely,  all  action  on  the  ques- 
tion." 

Here,  Mr.  President,  is  our  foe.  Here  is  the  unclean  spirit 
that  must  be  cast  out  from  the  hearts  of  the  people  before  they  can 
be  saved.  We  must  enter  the  inner  sanctuary  of  their  consciences, 
and  dispel  the  long  gathering  clouds  of  passion  and  prejudice  which 
hold  them  in  the  slumber  of  unconscious  guilt.  We  must  sound 
it  incessantly  in  their  ears,  and  in  trumpet  tones,  that  by  remain- 
ing in  the  service  of  these  factions  they  are  guilty  of  the  untold 
wrongs  of  slavery. 

I  say  to  Northern  Whigs  and  Democrats,  whatever  your  private 
feelings  and  opinions  may  be,  you  are  helping  perpetuate  slave- 
holding  and  slave-breeding  in  the  District  of  Columbia ;  you  are 
helping  prostitute  the  flag  of  our  Union  to  the  piratical  traffic  in 
human  flesh  on  the  sea ;  you  are  helping  curse  with  slavery  the  soil 
of  our  Territories,  and  form  out  of  it  more  slaveholding  States  ;  you 
are  helping  consign  men  to  the  horrors  of  slavery  on  the  affidavit 
of  their  hunter,  without  court  or  jury,  at  the  expense  of  the  Fed- 
eral Government,  and  making  the  practice  of  Christianity  a  crime  ; 
you  are  helping  destroy  the  freedom  of  speech  by  placing  it  under 
the  censorship  of  slavery ;  you  are  helping  widen  and  deepen  the 
general  American  hatred  of  the  colored  race,  which  is  the  soul  of 
slavery  ;  and,  instead  of  striving  like  patriots  to  rescue  the  gov- 
ernment from  the  pit  of  destruction  which  yawns  to  receive  it,  you 
are  doing  all  in  your  power  to  drift  it  further  and  further  from  its 
original  land-marks. 

Tell  me  if  these  things  are  not  true  ?  Tell  me  if  you  can  sup- 
port these  giant  factions,  lifting  their  proud  crests  as  the  strong- 
holds of  slavery,  and  arrayed  in  deadly  hostility  to  the  rights  of 
man,  without  sharing  in  the  guilt  and  the  retribution  of  the  op- 
pressors of  their  race  ? 


78     STRENGTH  AND   WEAKNESS   OF   THE   SLAVE  POWER. 

It  is  very  difficult,  I  know,  to  bring  moral  questions  into  the 
forum  of  politics,  or  political  questions  into  the  forum  of  morals ; 
but  I  hold  that  "  political  action  is  the  highest  and  most  responsi- 
ble form  of  moral  action,"  because  it  "  is  that  which,  above  all 
others,  bears  directly  on  the  present  and  permanent  welfare  of  the 
great  masses  of  humanity."  Men  should  shrink  from  the  sin  of 
personal  slaveholding  as  an  outrage  upon  man  and  a  crime  against 
God;  but  infinitely  exceeding  this  is  the  sin  of  so  acting  politically 
as  to  build  up  a  great  system  of  oppression  in  the  nation,  crushing 
millions  by  its  sway. 

Political  action  is  moral  action  compounded  ;  for  when  we  as 
citizens  become  recreant  to  our  country,  our  responsibility  is  mul- 
tiplied by  the  objects  which  our  action  concerns.  I  insist  that 
Northern  Whigs  and  Democrats  are  politically,  and  for  that  very 
reason  morally,  guilty  of  enslaving  their  race,  and  that  in  their 
espousal  of  the  slave  interest  as  a  great  national  concern  they  are 
levying  war  against  the  institutions  of  their  fathers.  They  in  their 
day  took  measures  for  the  extinction  of  slavery  in  a  majority  of  the 
old  States,  whilst  they  believed  it  was  rapidly  perishing  in  the 
remainder.  They  excluded  it  from  every  inch  of  territory  then 
belonging  to  the  government,  and  limited  to  twenty  years  the 
importation  of  slaves  from  abroad,  which  they  regarded  as  the  life 
of  the  system.  They  were  abolitionists,  though  their  process  of 
abolition  was  gradual.  But  Whigs  and  Democrats  to-day  preach 
a  totally  different  gospel.  They  say,  by  their  actions,  that  slavery 
shall  not  perish  in  this  Republic,  and  be  cast  out  like  every  other 
refuge  of  lies,  but  grow  stronger  and  stronger,  and  entwine  itself 
with  our  very  life,  and  be  co-eternal  with  the  liberty  which  was  to 
be  our  heritage.  They  say  that  every  sentiment  of  human 
brotherhood  toward  the  black  race  shall  be  dried  up ;  that  the  law 
of  kindness  shall  be  gradually  withdrawn  and  the  law  of  might 
invoked,  in  proportion  to  the  increase  of  our  servile  population  ; 
and  they  thus  hasten  the  crisis  when  slavery  shall  perish,  in  the 
language  of  Jefferson,  "  in  the  agonizing  spasms  of  infuriated  man, 
seeking  through  blood  and  slaughter  his  long  lost  liberty."  Such, 
my  friends,  is  the  guilt,  and  such  the  responsibility,  resting  upon 
these  factions,  and  upon  those  who  yield  them  their  support.  If 
there  are  incendiaries  in  this  government,  those  who  would  destroy 
the  Union  by  building  up  "  sectional  parties,"  they  are  the  leaders 
and  tools  of  these  factions,  who  are  endeavoring  to  make  slavery 
and  not  freedom  its  great  corner-stone,  and  to  restore  concord 
between  things  totally  irreconcilable  in  their  nature.     If  there  is 


STRENGTH   AND   WEAKNESS   OF   THE   SLAVE   POWER.      79 

such  a  crime  as  "  moral  treason,"  it  is  perpetrated  by  every  Whig 
and  Democrat  who  refuses  to  sever  himself  from  his  faithless 
organization,  and  labor  by  every  honorable  effort  to  bring  its  rule 
to  an  end.  Not  for  all  the  offices  which  this  slaveholding  govern- 
ment could  bestow  upon  all  the  doughfaces  from  Maine  to  the 
Pacific,  would  I  commit  my  judgment  and  conscience  to  the  keep- 
ing of  either  of  these  profligate  factions. 

But  leaving  this  topic,  permit  me,  in  conclusion,  to  notice  briefly 
the  other  main  bulwark  of  slavery,  —  the  religious  organizations  of 
the  country.  And  here  I  plant  myself  upon  the  oft-quoted  decla- 
ration of  one  of  the  ablest  men  in  our  land,  of  whatever  name  : 
"  There  is  no  power  out  of  the  Church  that  could  sustain  slavery  an 
hour,  if  it  were  not  sustained  in  it.  All  that  is  necessary  is  for 
each  Christian  man,  and  for  every  Christian  church,  to  stand  up  in 
the  sacred  majesty  of  such  a  solemn  testimony,  to  free  themselves 
from  all  connection  with  evil,  and  to  utter  a  calm  and  deliberate 
voice  to  the  world,  and  the  work  will  be  done."  Abolitionists  have 
reason  to  thank  Albert  Barnes  for  his  courageous  and  manly  utter- 
ance of  this  truth  some  years  ago  ;  for  whether  he  shall  now  practi- 
cally accept  it  or  decline  its  consequences,  it  has  gone  forth  with 
power  among  the  people,  waking  up  thousands,  I  doubt  not,  to  a 
sense  of  their  guilt,  whose  consciences  were  shrouded  in  darkness. 
But  what  are  our  churches  doing  for  the  anti-slavery  reform  ? 
Alas  !  the  popular  religion  of  the  country  lies  imbedded  in  the  pol- 
itics and  trade  of  the  country.  It  has  sunk  down  to  a  dead  level 
with  the  ruling  secular  influences  of  the  age.  It  has  ceased,  I  fear, 
to  be  a  divine  power,  practically  capable  of  saving  the  world  from 
its  sins.  It  has  formed  a  wicked  compact  with  the  wealth  and 
fashion  of  society,  and  become  their  servant,  instead  of  bringing 
them  into  subjection  to  its  supreme  law.  Instead  of  seeking  peace 
and  unity  in  the  Church  by  raising  its  uncompromising  voice 
against  the  evils  which  produce  discord,  it  sacrifices  the  principles 
of  justice  and  mercy  to  the  advancement  of  its  temporal  interests. 
Dr.  Chalmers  himself  has  said  that  even  our  orthodoxy  has  be- 
come effete,  a  body  of  ceremonies,  of  doctrinal  formulas,  from  which 
the  life  and  power  have  departed.  Smit  with  visions  of  ecclesias- 
tical power,  the  leading  religionists  are  zealously  intent  upon  the 
building  up  of  rich,  powerful,  and  popular  organizations,  as  if  these 
were  "  the  great  body  of  believers,"  the  true  Church,  according  to 
the  Scriptures.  What,  I  repeat,  are  these  religious  bodies  doing 
for  the  slave  ?  As  I  have  already  said,  they  are  breaking  bread 
with  his  owner  around  the  communion  table.     They  are  receiving 


80     STRENGTH   AND  WEAKNESS   OF   THE   SLAVE  POWER. 

slaveholders  into  full  fellowship.  The  preachers  and  members  of 
our  Protestant  denominations  alone,  own  over  six  hundred  thou- 
sand slaves.  The  Methodists,  Baptists,  and  Presbyterians,  all  have 
divided  on  the  slavery  question,  but  both  divisions  tolerate  slave- 
holding.  The  Methodist  Church  North,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  re- 
ports between  eighty  and  ninety  thousand  members  in  the  South, 
all  in  full  communion  with  slavery.  Even  our  tract,  and  mission- 
ary, and  Sunday-school  associations,  those  mighty  agencies  for  the 
diffusion  of  Christian  truth,  are  under  slaveholding  espionage.  The 
scissors  of  the  peculiar  institution  must  be  applied  to  their  publica- 
tions, which  must  be  so  carved  and  mangled  as  not  to  send  forth 
even  an  intimation  that  freedom  is  a  blessing,  or  slavery  a  curse. 
The  meek  and  lamb-like  clergy  and  churches  of  the  North  submit 
to  this  cold-blooded  priestly  havoc  in  uncomplaining  silence,  lest  the 
ire  of  the  slaveholder  should  be  kindled,  and  the  harmony  of  the 
Church  be  endangered.  In  all  the  late  publications  of  the  Ameri- 
can Tract  Society,  I  am  informed  that  not  a  syllable  can  be  found 
against  slavery.  Such  sins  as  Sabbath-breaking,  dancing,  fine 
dressing,  etc.,  are  abundantly  noticed  and  condemned,  but  not  even 
a  whisper  must  go  forth  against  the  "  sum  of  all  villainies."  The 
great  denominations  of  the  North  are  thus  made  to  uphold  Ameri- 
can slavery,  and,  like  our  great  political  organizations,  necessarily 
involve  their  supporters  in  the  guilt  of  slaveholding.  What  then 
is  to  be  done  ?  Slavery,  we  see,  is  thus  shamefully  espoused  by 
our  churches.  According  to  the  high  authority  already  quoted,  it 
could  not  exist  a  single  hour  if  it  were  not  supported  by  our  relig- 
ious bodies.  It  is  one  of  their  chief  bonds  of  union ;  and  all  that  is 
necessary,  he  tells  us,  is  that  each  Christian  man,  and  every  Chris- 
tian church,  shall  free  themselves  from  all  connection  with  the  evil, 
and  this  foul  national  blot  shall  be  wiped  out,  this  "flame  from 
hell "  be  extinguished.  Here,  my  friends,  is  the  plain  and  straight 
path  of  duty,  whoever  may  blink  it ;  and  if  our  walking  therein 
shall  lead  to  the  rending  of  ecclesiastical  bodies,  let  us  remember 
that  righteousness,  not  peace,  should  be  our  primary  aim;  that 
"first  pure,  then  peaceable,"  is  the  divine  order  of  Christian  pro- 
gress. And  yet,  wre  are  sometimes  solemnly  wrarned  against  the 
sundering  of  outward  bonds,  as  a  calamity  to  the  Church  !  Does 
the  Church  consist  of  an  external  organization,  however  many  it 
may  enlist  under  a  common  name  ?  Do  we  know  so  little  of  Prot- 
estantism as  to  make  the  Church  identical  with  any  known  eccle- 
siastical body?  Is  the  Church  rent  in  twain  when  a  religious 
denomination  is  divided  ?    On  the  contrary,  I  hold,  that  we  should 


STRENGTH   AND   WEAKNESS  OF   THE    SLAVE   POWER.      81 

welcome  divisions,  where  they  proceed  from  an  honest  and  faithful 
endeavor  to  apply  Christianity  to  all  known  sins.  The  unity  of 
the  Church  demands  the  breaking  up  of  outward  organizations, 
when  they  espouse  and  persist  in  upholding  a  great  wrong.  Who 
believes  that  Christianity  would  be  blotted  out  if  every  overshad- 
owing hierarchy  in  the  land  were  broken  into  fragments  ?  The 
cause  of  true  religion,  instead  of  being  mortally  wounded,  might 
even  be  advanced.  The  free  spirit  of  Congregationalism,  strength- 
ened by  the  shock,  might  stand  up  stronger  than  ever  as  a  break- 
water against  ecclesiastical  tyranny  in  future  ;  for  centralization  is 
not  less  an  evil  in  religious  than  in  civil  matters.  The  great  body 
of  the  people,  freed  from  priestly  rule,  and  strong  in  their  religious 
yearnings,  would  gather  together  in  smaller  flocks  under  their 
chosen  shepherds,  and  thus  a  free  Church,  armed  with  every 
available  instrumentality  for  good,  would  be  found  laboring  in  the 
cause  of  Christ,  and  boldly  smiting  every  form  of  sin.  It  becomes 
us,  as  Republicans,  in  my  humble  judgment,  to  repudiate  the 
hierarchical  idea  of  a  Church,  and  to  inaugurate  the  Democratic 
and  Christian  idea ;  to  forego  our  love  of  great  ecclesiastical 
bodies,  revolving  round  a  central  point  of  dogma,  in  the  endeavor 
to  unite  men  of  different  creeds  on  the  broad  platform  of  practical 
righteousness,  making  that  the  measure  of  Christian  character,  the 
test  of  Christian  fellowship. 

A  great  centralized  religious  power  is  unfavorable  to  free  indi- 
vidual thought  and  action.  It  is  apt  to  invoke  the  power  of  num- 
bers, rather  than  the  spirit  of  truth,  and  to  mistake  denominational 
sw-ay  for  the  spread  of  Christianity.  It  becomes  self-seeking,  sac- 
rificing even  justice  and  humanity  to  the  desire  to  gather  multi- 
tudes under  the  banner  of  its  creed.  It  has  been  well  said  that 
"  Protestantism  can  be  true  to  itself,  and  to  its  mission  in  civilizing 
the  world,  only  when  it  can  say,  in  sincerity  and  truth,  that  it 
cares  less  for  the  creed  of  Luther,  or  Calvin,  or  Fox,  or  Wesley, 
than  for  Christ's  distinguishing  and  everlasting;  law  of  righteous- 
ness  and  love." 

On  this  principle,  Mr.  President,  we  take  our  stand,  and  we 
should  carry  it  rigidly  into  practice,  whatever  the  consequences 
may  be  to  the  religious  denominations  of  the  country,  North  or 
South.  If  divisions  take  place,  we  must  say,  emphatically,  that  we 
are  maintaining  the  unity  of  the  Church,  whilst  they  alone  are 
schismatics  who  elevate  dogma  above  life,  and  substitute  an  out- 
ward worldly  establishment  for  the  true  Church  of  Christ. 

Divisions,  I  doubt  not,  will  come.     The  claims  of  active  philan- 


82     STRENGTH   AND   WEAKNESS    OF    THE   SLAVE   POWER. 

thropy,  if  disowned  by  the  teachers  and  professors  of  religion,  will 
nevertheless  be  heard  ;  and  they  will  not  heed  the  prudent  counsels 
of  our  timid  and  conservative  doctors  and  ecclesiastics  who  would 
forsake  father  and  mother  to  save  their  priestly  power.  To  their 
tyrannical  domination  we  must  stand  uncompromisingly  opposed. 
They  will  never  gird  on  the  sword  of  Reform  till  the  victory  is 
won.  Our  reliance,  indeed,  must  be  on  Christianity  as  a  divine 
message  to  man.  It  is  the  light  and  hope  of  the  world,  the  inspirer 
of  every  good  work,  the  only  power  "  given  among  men  whereby 
we  must  be  saved."  The  Church,  I  fully  believe,  is  to  redeem  the 
race.  But  as  in  ancient  days,  so  now,  the  work  of  reform  must 
beo-in  outside  of  existing  systems,  beyond  the  shadow  of  our  ruling 
church  judicatories,  among  the  great  body  of  the  people.  We 
must  not  commence  with  the  chief  priests  and  rulers,  who  are 
always  ready  to  crucify  Reform,  but  like  Fox  and  Wesley  take  our 
stand  in  the  midst  of  the  multitude,  who  have  no  other  interest 
than  to  find  and  embrace  the  truth. 

If  we  make  our  appeal  to  them,  and  wisely  and  faithfully  labor, 
we  shall  triumph.  The  ruling  powers  in  Church  and  State,  like 
Pilate  and  Herod,  may  combine  against  us,  but  we  shall  be  sus- 
tained. The  strong  blast  of  the  world  may  oppose  us,  but  we  shall 
be  wafted  onwards  by  "  the  trade-winds  of  heaven."  "One  strong 
I  find  here  below,  the  just  thing,  the  true  thing."  And  a  great 
consolation  to  Abolitionists  it  is,  that,  few  in  numbers,  hated  of  the 
world,  and  branded  as  fanatics,  incendiaries,  and  madmen,  they  yet 
have  a  perfect  assurance,  a  faith  running  over  with  fullness,  that  an 
Almighty  arm  will  crown  with  ultimate  success  their  humble  and 
sincere  strivings  for  freedom  and  humanity. 


THE    STATE    OF    POLITICAL    PARTIES  —  THE 
SIGNS   OF   THE   TIMES. 

DELIVERED  AT    THE    FREE    SOIL    STATE    CONVENTION,    INDIANAPOLIS. 

MAY  25,  1853. 

["When  this  speech  was  delivered  the  cause  of  freedom  seemed  to  have  reached  its 
darkest  clays.  General  Pierce,  elected  by  an  overwhelming  majority  on  the  Baltimore 
Finality  Platform,  had  been  inaugurated  in  March  previous,  and  his  administration 
defiantly  launched  in  the  interest  of  the  South.  The  champions  of  slavery  everywhere 
regarded  their  cause  as  finally  triumphant,  and  this  was  the  general  feeling  of  men  of 
all  parties  who  looked  only  to  the  surface  of  events.  The  directly  opposite  view  of  the 
situation,  however,  which  is  here  presented  and  so  variously  illustrated,  has  been  fully 
justified  by  time.] 

Mr.  President,  —  There  are  many  persons  who  believe  that  the 
anti-slavery  movement  of  this  country  has  perished  and  passed  away. 
They  think  it  has  spent  its  force,  lived  out  its  time,  and  finally  been 
gathered  to  its  place  among  the  defunct  humbugs  of  the  world. 
And  whilst  they  rejoice  that  the  fierce  lion  of  abolitionism  has  been 
tamed  into  subjection,  they  welcome  to  their  loving  embrace  the 
meek  lamb  of  slavery,  and  thank  God  that  the  millennial  day  of 
peace,  so  long  and  so  devoutly  prayed  for  by  hunker  politicians  and 
doctors  of  divinity,  has  at  last  been  ushered  in. 

Well,  my  friends,  this  view  of  our  cause  is  certainly  full  of  con- 
solation to  those  who  entertain  it,  and  would  be  full  of  sorrow  to 
us  did  we  believe  it  to  be  true.  Let  us,  during  a  brief  hour,  con- 
sider it.  Let  us  cast  our  eye  backward  over  the  past  and  forward 
into  the  future,  and  determine  if  we  may,  our  present  drifting. 
And  allow  me  to  say  in  the  outset,  that  our  judgment  in  this  mat- 
ter must  greatly  depend  upon  the  stand-point  from  which  we  view 
it.  A  genuine,  whole-hearted  anti-slavery  man  always  believes 
his  cause  to  be  onward.  He  no  more  doubts  its  progress  and  its 
triumph  than  he  doubts  his  own  existence,  or  that  of  his  Maker. 
He  has  faith  in  rectitude,  and  in  the  government  of  the  world  by  a 
Providence.  He  believes  that  justice  is  omnipotent,  and  that  op- 
pression and  crime  must  perish,  because  they  are  opposed  to  the 
beneficent  ordainments  of  the  universe.  He  is  not  blinded  or  dis- 
heartened by  the  irregular  ebb  and  flow  of  political  currents,  or  by 
facts  which  drift  about  upon  their  surface,  but  he  penetrates  beneath 


84  THE    STATE    OF    POLITICAL   PARTIES. 

it  to  those  great  moral  tides  which  underlie,  and  heave  onward, 
the  politics,  the  religion,  and  the  whole  frame-work  of  society. 
Abolitionists  have  often  been  branded  as  infidels;  but  I  am  ac- 
quainted with  no  body  of  men  since  the  introduction  of  Christianity 
into  the  earth,  who  have  evinced  so  strong,  so  steadfast,  and  so 
vital  a  faith  in  the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brotherhood  of  man. 

But  how  different  the  case  of  the  hardened  and  unbelieving 
doughface.  He  has  lost  the  capacity  to  discern  the  truth.  His 
light  has  been  so  long  hid  under  the  bushel  of  his  party  that  he  can 
scarcely  distinguish  it  from  darkness.  He  calls  evil  good,  and  good 
evil.  His  intellect  is  surfeited  with  sophistry,  and  his  conscience 
drugged  with  compromises.  Expediency  is  the  law  of  his  life. 
Right,  with  him,  is  an  unmeaning  abstraction.  He  has  no  faith  in 
the  omnipotence  of  truth.  He  "  hath  said  in  his  heart  there  is  no 
God  ;  "  or  if  he  believes  in  a  God,  he  is  not  a  God  of  justice,  of 
mercy,  of  universal  love,  who  is  no  respecter  of  persons,  but  a  Be- 
ing who  in  his  main  attributes  is  less  a  God  than  a  devil.  To  him 
Christianity  is  a  riddle,  whatever  his  professions  may  be  ;  for  he 
brands  as  fanatics  and  infidels  those  who  would  reduce  its  first  and 
plainest  teachings  to  practice,  and  would  crucify  the  Saviour  should 
He  come  upon  the  earth  in  bodily  form.  Is  such  a  man  fit  to  judge 
our  movement  ?  Of  course  he  believes  it  to  be  constantly  declin- 
ing. No  chord  of  his  heart  vibrates  in  harmony  with  it,  no  aspira- 
tion of  Ills  soul  after  goodness  awakens  within  him  a  faith  in  its 
triumphs.  He  cannot  believe.  His  mind  is  so  hopelessly  fastened 
in  the  meshes  of  error,  and  so  twisted  and  braided  with  evil  that  no 
ray  of  moral  light  can  penetrate  its  dark  labyrinths. 

We  must,  then,  in  prosecuting  the  inquiry  before  us,  rely  upon 
our  own  judgment,  and  prefer  our  own  point  of  vision.  We  may 
err  in  many  particulars  ;  we  certainly  set  up  no  claim  to  infallibility  ; 
but  we  believe  there  is  no  class  of  persons  outside  of  our  ranks 
whose  minds  are  freer  from  blinding  influences,  and  from  every 
weight  that  can  encumber  the  honest  action  of  the  judgment. 

In  regard  to  the  political  phases  of  our  cause  two  facts  are  fre- 
quently referred  to  in  proof  of  its  rapid  decline.  The  first  is,  the 
small  vote  for  Hale  last  year  as  compared  with  the  vote  for  Van 
Buren  four  years  previous  ;  the  second  is,  the  overwhelming  major- 
ity by  which  General  Pierce  was  elected  to  the  Presidency.  Let 
us  briefly  examine  these  supposed  crumbs  of  pro-slavery  comfort, 
and  see  what  there  is  in  them.  In  the  year  1848,  in  the  State  of 
New  York  alone,  about  one  hundred  thousand  men  voted  the  Free 
Democratic  ticket  for  President,  who  before  that  time  never  had 


THE   STATE    OF   TOLITICAL  PARTIES.  85 

been  identified  with  the  anti-slavery  movement,  and  never  have 
been  identified  with  it  since.  They  were  not  Free  Soil  men,  but 
Van  Buren  men.  They  were  not  actuated  by  hatred  of  slavery, 
but  hatred  of  General  Cass,  who  had  been  his  successful  rival.  It 
is  obvious  that  this  feeling  was  not  confined  to  New  York,  but 
operated  pretty  decidedly  in  all  the  non-slaveholding  States.  It 
seems  perfectly  fair  to  suppose  that  could  we  eliminate  this  Van 
Buren  element  from  the  struggle  of  1848,  and  estimate  truly  the 
reliable  anti-slavery  force  of  that  year,  the  vote  of  1852  would  show 
an  encouraging  increase  instead  of  a  rapid  decline  in  our  strength. 
The  proper  test  of  truth  would  be  a  comparison  of  the  anti-slavery 
vote  of  1844  with  that  of  last  year,  leaving  entirely  out  of  view  the 
deceptive  epoch  of  1848,  and  this  shows  an  increase  of  nearly  three- 
fold in  the  intervening  space  of  eight  years. 

Nor  is  the  other  fact  to  which  I  have  referred  more  solacing  to  the 
enemies  of  our  movement.  Let  me  ask  you  how  the  large  majority 
for  General  Pierce  was  occasioned  ?  That  he  is  eminently  pro- 
slavery,  no  man  doubts.  A  more  abject  tool  of  the  peculiar  insti- 
tution probably  could  not  have  been  selected  among  all  the  white 
slaves  that  infest  our  Northern  States.  This  circumstance,  too, 
doubtless  gave  him  many  votes.  But  it  presents  one  aspect  only 
of  the  fact  I  am  considering.  The  other  is,  that  General  Scott 
stood  upon  a  platform  which,  in  all  essential  particulars,  was  as  ob- 
jectionable as  that  of  his  opponent,  and  the  Whig  strength  therefore 
could  not  be  rallied.  To  their  honor  be  it  remembered  that  thou- 
sands of  Whigs,  notwithstanding  their  dislike  of  General  Pierce,  and 
their  admiration  of  General  Scott,  as  a  man,  and  notwithstanding 
the  attempted  drill  of  their  leaders  and  the  influence  of  such  men 
as  Seward  and  Greeley,  could  not  be  driven  into  the  support  of  the 
Finality  Platform.  The  enormous  majority  of  General  Pierce  there- 
fore, and  the  dispersion  and  ruin  of  the  Whig  party,  are  facts  which 
not  only  admit,  but  require,  an  anti-slavery  solution.  And  they 
are  facts  which  to  us  are  full  of  encouragement.  We  should  rejoice 
in  the  hopeless  prostration  of  one  of  these  parties,  and  the  morbid 
growth  and  dropsical  condition  of  the  other.  And  if,  as  I  fully  be- 
lieve, the  bolt  which  has  felled  whiggery  to  the  earth  has  pene- 
trated to  the  "  vital  parts  "  of  the  "  cutaneous  democracy,"  we 
have  peculiar  reasons  to  thank  God  for  his  mercies.  Everybody 
knows  that  we  have  alwavs  regarded  these  organizations  as  the 
bulwarks  of  slavery.  The  Southern  wing  of  each  of  them,  in  every 
instance,  has  given  law  to  the  whole  body,  thus  rendering  it  the 
wicked  instrument  for  the  perpetration  of  every  outrage  which  the 


86  THE    STATE    OF   POLITICAL   PARTIES. 

slave  interest  has  seen  fit  to  demand.  To  wage  unceasing  war 
against  them  has  been  considered  the  clear  duty  of  every  friend  of 
the  slave.  Our  cause  could  never  hope  to  triumph  without  their 
overthrow,  and  our  great  desire  for  years  past  has  been  to  devise 
some  method  by  which  this  could  be  accomplished. 

I  will  not  say  that  their  formation,  more  than  twenty  years  ago, 
was  not  an  honest  work  in  tiie  main  on  both  sides.  Those  who 
believed  in  a  national  bank,  in  high  protective  duties,  in  large 
schemes  of  internal  improvement  by  the  Federal  Government,  and 
in  the  distribution  of  the  proceeds  of  our  public  lands,  naturally 
rallied  under  a  common  banner,  and  formed  themselves  into  a  party. 
Those  who  opposed  these  measures,  and  espoused  the  doctrines  to 
which  that  opposition  gave  birth,  as  naturally  formed  themselves 
into  another  party.  Each  plead  its  own  existence  as  a  necessity, 
resulting  from  the  formation  of  the  other.  Each  held  the  other  in 
its  orbit,  whilst  both  revolved  round  a  common  centre  of  antago- 
nism, which  was  their  spirit  and  their  life.  Neither  of  them  there- 
fore was  self-subsisting,  but  each  committed  its  internal  dissensions 
to  the  guidance  of  this  all-absorbing  partisan  animosity,  which  lost 
sight  of  everything  but  the  common  foe,  and  nerved  it  with  a  vigor- 
ous life.  It  was,  however,  an  animosity  founded  on  principle.  There 
were,  as  I  have  said,  well-defined  issues  between  them,  and  each 
labored  earnestly  for  the  success  of  its  cherished  doctrines.  It  was 
perhaps  impossible  that  these  parties  should  not  have  been  called  into 
being,  because  they  were  divided  upon  the  living  issues  of  the  time. 
It  is  quite  as  obvious  that  they  could  last  no  longer  than  the  causes 
which  made  them  necessary  continued  operative  ;  for  party  forma- 
tions must  always  adapt  themselves  to  the  shifting  phases  of  public 
questions.  This  we  may  set  down  as  an  axiom.  The  Whigs,  dis- 
regarding it,  have  attempted  to  lengthen  out  their  life  beyond  its 
appointed  time.  They  have  tried  to  live  after  the  original  source 
of  their  life  was  withdrawn.  As  a  party,  they  are  unmistakably 
dead.  Horace  Greeley  affirms  it,  and  the  central  organ  of  whig- 
gery  at  Washington  virtually  occupies  the  same  position.  It  is 
true,  there  are  persons  still  surviving  who  style  themselves  Whigs, 
and  who  seem  to  believe  they  are  such,  but  their  political  capital  is 
obviously  a  mere  party  cognomen,  which  now  has  no  other  mean- 
ing than  a  certain  traditionary  reverence  which  it  inspires.  Ortho- 
dox whiggery,  as  expounded  by  its  great  prophets  in  its  better  days, 
is  no  more.  It  belongs  to  the  past ;  it  can  only  be  examined  as  the 
fossil  remains  of  a  vitality  that  has  become  extinct.  If  any  rem- 
nant of  it  survived  till  the  last  Baltimore  Whig  Convention,  it  was 


THE   STATE    OF  POLITICAL  PARTIES.  87 

then  and  there  formally  surrendered  to  the  democracy,  whilst  the 
spoils  alone  divided  those  who  were  really  brethren  in  principle, 
and  who  longed  to  embrace  each  other  upon  the  common  altar  of 
slavery.  Under  these  circumstances,  the  rout  of  the  Whig  party 
last  year  was  as  natural  as  had  been  its  original  formation.  It  had 
fulfilled  its  mission,  surrendered  its  doctrines,  outlived  its  honor, 
and  for  these  reasons  was  consigned  by  the  fates  to  an  ignominious 
grave. 

We  have,  I  repeat,  abundant  reason  to  rejoice  at  this,  because 
if  it  be  a  fact,  the  Democratic  party  must  follow  in  its  footsteps. 
It  has  been  held  together,  as  I  have  already  shown,  far  less  by  any 
internal  principle  of  cohesion  than  by  an  overmastering  hatred  of 
the  Whigs.  This  has  been  the  great  artery  of  its  life,  as  its  leading 
politicians  well  know.  And  could  we  extort  from  them  to  day  the 
honest  truth,  they  would  tell  us  they  did  not  intend  to  beat  the 
Whigs  so  badly,  and  make  them  sick  unto  death  ;  that  they  are 
sorry  they  have  done  so ;  that  their  own  family  broils  can  only  be 
quieted  by  a  concentrated  animosity  against  such  a  foe  as  the  Whig 
party ;  and  that  they  pray  for  its  reorganization,  and  dread  nothing 
so  much  as  a  new  party,  built  upon  its  ruins,  which  shall  stand  un- 
swervingly by  the  principles  of  real  democracy,  and  invite,  from  all 
quarters,  the  intelligence  and  worth  of  the  land.  They  understand 
this  perfectly.  See  how  the  "  Washington  Union  "  shudders  at  the 
idea  that  the  Whig  party  is  dissolved,  and  its  mission  ended  ;  see  how 
it  spurns  the  fraternal  words  and  repels  the  friendly  advances  of 
the  Republic  !  To  Free  Democrats  this  is  most  encouragingly  sig- 
nificant. Why,  just  look  at  the  present  attitude  of  the  so-called 
national  democracy,  and  tell  me  if  there  is  any  bond  of  union  within 
itself  that  can  atone  for  the  loss  of  that  external  pressure  which  has 
hitherto  hooped  it  together  ?  Thei'e  is,  I  admit,  a  general  harmony 
in  its  ranks  respecting  certain  negative  and  obsolete  doctrines,  such 
as  opposition  to  a  bank,  to  land  distribution,  etc.,  but  is  there  any 
real  agreement  as  to  more  vital  questions  ?  Is  the  party  agreed 
upon  the  question  of  tariff  or  free  trade  ?  Is  it  agreed  on  the  ques- 
tion of  internal  improvements  ?  Is  it  agreed  upon  the  question  of 
land  reform?  Is  it  agreed  as  to  the  doctrine  of  non-intervention? 
Are  the  Democrats  of  the  North  and  South  really  agreed  on  the 
slavery  question  ?  Is  there  no  strife  between  Old  America  and 
Young  America,  both  being  prominent  members  of  the  same  polit- 
ical family  ?  Is  there  no  difference  between  national  democracy  and 
nullifying  democracy?  Since  the  old  party  ear-marks  will  no 
longer  serve  their  purpose,  what  is  a  Democrat  ?     How  shall  we 


88  THE    STATE   OF   POLITICAL   PARTIES. 

describe  him  ?  He  seems  indeed  to  be  a  creature  of  circum- 
stances, rather  than  a  man  of  principles.  To  know  him,  you  must 
first  determine  his  latitude  and  longitude.  In  South  Carolina  he 
is  a  disunionist.  In  Georgia  he  is  a  compromise  man.  In  Ohio, 
according  to  his  platform,  he  is  a  free  soiler.  In  Mississippi,  he  is 
a  free  trader.  In  Pennsylvania,  he  is  a  tariff  man.  In  Virginia, 
he  is  a  strict  constructionist.  In  Illinois,  he  is  for  liberal  appropria- 
tions for  internal  improvements.  A  Democrat  in  the  North  is  in 
favor  of  land  reform  (so  far  as  the  slaveholders  Avill  allow)  ;  in 
the  South  he  hates  it  as  he  hates  abolitionism  itself.  In  this  great 
and  harmonious  party  are  Hunkers  and  Barn-burners,  hard  shells 
and  soft  shells,  old  fogies  and  filibusters,  "thorough-going  radicals 
and  thorough-bred  Federalists,''  and  in  short  every  type  and  variety 
of  opinion  known  to  our  political  nomenclature,  and  which  could 
augment  the  confusion  and  jargon  of  the  whole.  It  is  literally 
bloated  with  the  centrifugal  and  belligerent  elements  which  from  all 
quarters  have  poured  in  upon  it,  and  sought  the  prestige  of  its 
name.  Can  any  reflecting  man  doubt  the  issue  ?  These  hostile 
factions,  held  together  by  no  tie  save  a  lust  for  office,  must  inevit- 
ably fall  to  devouring  one  another.  There  being  no  longer  any 
outward  foe  to  arm  them  with  a  common  and  supreme  resentment, 
and  no  internal  concord  to  cement  them  into  one  body,  their  dis- 
persion will  be  as  natural  as  the  action  of  gravity. 

Let  us  then  take  courage  from  the  signs  in  the  political  horizon. 
Let  us  hail  with  delight  the  near  approach  of  "  the  good  time  com- 
ing," when  men,  no  longer  blinded  by  the  assumed  necessity  of 
choosing  between  two  evils,  shall  march  over  their  ruins  to  the 
ballot-box  with  an  eye  single  to  the  highest  good  of  their  country. 
Never,  in  my  judgment,  have  we  had  so  many  reasons  to  feel  en- 
couraged as  now.  Our  faith  is  no  longer  "  the  evidence  of  things 
not  seen,"  but  is  sustained  by  such  visible  fruits  of  righteousness 
as  should  inspire  us  with  a  redoubled  effort  and  an  unquenchable 
zeal.  We  are  emancipating  the  minds  of  men  from  the  cursed 
tyranny  of  party,  and  dispelling  the  clouds  which  have  so  long 
veiled  from  them  the  light  of  truth.  We  have  become  a  political, 
as  well  as  a  moral  power  in  the  country  ;  and  we  shall  prove  our- 
selves such,  not  only  in  the  overthrow  of  these  strongholds  of  slav- 
ery, but  in  rearing  upon  their  ruins  a  new  temple,  which  shall  be 
dedicated  to  liberty.  Henceforth,  instead  of  the  decaying  and  fac- 
titious antagonism  between  Whigs  and  Democrats,  we  shall  have 
the  native  and  vital  antagonism  between  slavery  and  freedom  ;  and 
upon  this  issue  the  great  parties  of  the  future  are  to  be  formed,  and 
our  great  victory  is  to  be  won. 


THE   STATE   OF  POLITICAL  PARTIES.  89 

But  I  pass  from  the  political  aspects  of  the  question  to  other  con- 
siderations not  less  encouraging.  Nearly  three  years  ago,  as  you 
well  know,  the  decree  went  forth  that  agitation  must  cease.  Silence 
was  to  be  the  platform  of  all  of  us.  We  were  no  longer  to  talk 
about  slavery ;  and  this  necessarily  implied  that  we  were  not  to 
suffer  it  seriously  to  occupy  our  thoughts,  or  sway  our  feelings  ;  for 
men  will  talk  when  they  think  and  feel  earnestly.  Well,  what 
has  been  the  working  of  this  prohibitory  tariff  upon  the  action  of 
our  highest  faculties  ?  Why,  I  believe  I  may  venture  the  asser- 
tion that  within  the  past  three  years  there  has  been  more  agitation, 
more  earnest  thought  upon  this  contraband  subject,  more  hearts 
have  been  awakened  to  the  wrongs  of  the  slave,  than  within  the 
whole  period  of  the  anti-slavery  movement  besides.  Let  facts  be 
submitted  and  speak  for  themselves. 

Three  years  ago,  the  "  National  Era  "  had  about  twelve  thou- 
sand subscribers.  Now  it  has,  I  presume,  at  least  thirty  thousand. 
I  believe  Dr.  Bailey  estimates  that  each  paper  subscribed  for  has 
five  readers,  which  gives  him  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  in 
the  United  States.  You  all  know  the  character  of  this  paper. 
You  know  it  is  constantly  multiplying  its  patrons,  and  that  just  in 
proportion  as  pro-slavery  men  can  be  induced  to  read  it,  they  slacken 
their  hold  upon  their  party  and  finally  abandon  it.  By  its  unques- 
tioned ability,  by  the  avoidance  of  extreme  positions,  by  that  very 
moderation  which  some  condemn,  it  has  made  itself  a  most  power- 
ful instrument  in  the  political  regeneration  of  the  country,  drawing 
toward  us  multitudes  who  would  have  been  repelled  by  a  harsher 
missionary.  Then  we  have,  at  this  time,  more  than  seventy  weekly 
papers,  devoted  specially  to  the  anti-slavery  reform,  and  seven 
daily  papers,  all  of  which,  so  far  as  I  can  ascertain,  are  receiving  a 
support,  with  encouraging  prospects  ahead.  Judging  from  their 
tone,  there  never  was  so  much  life  in  our  cause  as  at  this  time. 
There  are  also  powerful  and  influential  journals,  outside  of  the 
ranks  of  those  who  make  the  slavery  question  paramount,  which  in 
their  sphere,  and  in  their  own  way,  are  doing  a  good  work  for  the 
cause  of  freedom.  They  are  creating  a  popular  sentiment  that  will 
more  and  more  control  them,  and  ultimately  drive  them  on  to  the 
high  ground  of  independent  anti-slavery  action.  In  what  I  have 
said  I  have  not  included  our  professedly  religious  papers,  several 
of  which  are  speaking  out  with  a  commendable  boldness.  The 
Christian  press  at  Cincinnati  is  doing  an  excellent  service,  and 
gives  promise  of  great  usefulness,  whilst  the  question  of  the  relation 
of  our  religious  denominations  to  slavery  is  creating  an  agitation 


90  THE    STATE   OF  POLITICAL   PARTIES. 

hitherto  unknown  among  them,  and  which  must  continue  to  dis- 
turb their  peace,  till  it  shall  be  settled  on  the  basis  of  humanity 
and  freedom. 

But  not  to  dwell  upon  minor  facts,  let  me  observe  that  not  long 
after  the  total  suppression  of  agitation  was  resolved  upon,  a  woman, 
having  got  entirely  "  out  of  her  sphere,"  wrote  a  book  which  has 
not  only  lit  up  the  fires  of  agitation,  to  an  unexampled  degree, 
throughout  the  whole  extent  of  this  country,  but  has  carried  the 
torch  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  the  world's 
great  missionary  of  freedom,  and  the  harbinger  of  deliverance  to 
the  African  race,  is  the  glory,  not  less  than  the  wonder  of  our  age  ; 
and  it  is  not  strange  that  Mrs.  Stowe  should  regard  it  as  having 
risen  "  on  the  mighty  stream  of  a  divine  purpose."  How  many 
readers  has  this  work  in  the  United  States?  It  is  impossible  to 
say  with  any  claim  to  accuracy  ;  but  judging  from  the  number  of 
copies  already  published  and  sold,  and  the  avidity  with  which  the 
work  has  been  sought  after  by  all  classes,  and  in  all  sections  of  the 
country,  I  think  we  may  safely  set  it  down  at  one  million  !  It  is 
more  than  three  times  this  number  according  to  the  "  Literary 
World,"  which  estimates  ten  readers  to  every  copy  sold.  But  I 
desire  to  speak  within  bounds.  A  million  of  American  readers  of 
an  abolition  book  ;  a  million  of  men  and  women  pouring  out  their 
tears  over  the  wrongs  of  three  millions  in  chains  ;  a  million  of 
hearts  throbbing  responsive  to  the  sufferings  of  the  slave !  Is  this 
the  entertainment  to  which  our  finality  friends  invited  us  two  or 
three  vears  ao;o  ?  Could  the  most  sanguine  anions  us  at  that  time 
have  dreamed  of  so  wonderful  a  progress?  And  this  million  of 
readers  of  "  Uncle  Tom  "  must  swell  into  millions  ;  and  when  light 
has  thus  found  its  way  to  their  minds,  scattering  the  mists  which 
have  so  long  shrouded  them  in  cold  indifference,  and  arousing 
our  common  humanity  to  a  sense  of  the  enormity  of  slavery,  the 
triumph  of  freedom  will  draw  nigh.  The  seed  will  have  been 
planted  that  must  bring  forth  fruit ;  for  when  the  minds  and  hearts 
of  men  are  once  kindled  by  a  gigantic  wrong,  the  fire  can  only 
be  quenched  by  its  overthrow.  A  great  moral  revolution  can 
never  go  backwards,  because  the  spirit  which  sustains  it  is  the 
spirit  of  God.  As  well  might  we  attempt  to  turn  back  the  whole 
tide  of  civilization,  and  blot  out  Christianity  itself,  as  to  control 
those  quickened  moral  agencies  that  are  undermining  the  fabric  of 
American  slavery. 

But  let  us  follow  this  agitating  missionary  across  the  Atlantic. 
It  will  be  remembered  that  only  a  few  months  after  its  publication 


THE  STATE    OF  POLITICAL  PARTIES.  91 

in  the  United  States,  editions  of  it  amounting  to  four  hundred 
thousand  copies  were  issued  in  England  alone  !  Its  readers  there, 
of  course,  must  now  be  counted  by  millions!  The  rage  for  it 
among  all  classes  has  no  parallel  in  the  history  of  English  literature. 
It  is  served  up  for  the  masses  in  sixpenny  editions,  dramatized  and 
acted  on  the  stage,  coined  into  poetry  and  song,  and  thus  moulded 
into  the  great  heart  of  the  nation  as  a  household  word.  Its 
popularity  is  not  less  in  France.  Some  hundred  thousand  copies 
have  been  sold,  whilst  the  leading  papers  of  Paris  are  filled  with 
"  Uncle  Tom  "  literature.  It  is  to  be  found  in  every  one  of  the 
numerous  circulating  libraries  of  the  city.  Notwithstanding  large 
importations  from  abroad  there  have  been  eleven  or  twelve  trans- 
lations of  the  work.  Engraved  portraits  of  Mrs.  Stowe,  we  are 
informed,  are  displayed  from  the  shop  windows,  whilst  artists  are 
employed  in  transferring  to  canvas  the  graphic  scenes  from  her 
pages.  The  theatres  of  Paris  are  crowded  to  overflowing  with 
spectators  and  listeners  to  the  dramatic  scenes  founded  on  the  won- 
derful American  book.  In  Italy,  several  editions  of  it  have  been 
printed,  and  some  of  the  daily  papers  have  been  sending  it  forth  in 
chapters,  after  the  fashion  in  Paris  on  its  first  introduction  into  that 
city.  It  has  created  quite  a  sensation  in  Germany,  in  Prussia,  in 
Austria,  and  in  Russia,  and  is  finding  its  way  into  every  part  of 
Christendom  as  rapidly  as  human  instrumentalities  can  carry  it. 
It  is  favored  by  the  European  democracy,  from  an  honest  enthu- 
siasm for  liberty,  and  from  a  sincere  desire  to  see  our  country  purged 
from  the  loathsome  blot  of  slavery ;  it  is  favored  or  connived  at  by 
the  advocates  of  despotism,  because,  as  they  suppose,  their  own 
peculiar  institution  is  strengthened  b}r  the  exposure  of  a  blacker  vil- 
lainy in  the  great  model  Republic.  Who  then  will  venture  to  guess 
at  the  number  of  readers  of  "  Uncle  Tom  "  on  the  Continent,  or  cal- 
culate the  influence  of  the  public  opinion  thus  formed  ?  Our  pro- 
slavery  foreign  diplomacy,  appalled  at  the  spectacle,  plies  all  its  arts 
in  vain  to  stifle  and  turn  back  the  Christian  sentiment  of  the  masses 
in  the  old  world.  That  sentiment  will  be  heard,  not  in  Europe  only, 
but  in  our  own  slaveholding  and  slave-catching  States.  It  can  no 
more  be  confined  to  Europe,  than  the  winds.  Daniel  Webster,  you 
know,  used  to  tell  us  that  there  is  not  a  monarch  on  earth  whose 
throne  is  not  liable  to  be  shaken  to  its  foundations  by  the  public 
opinion  of  the  civilized  world.  Slaveholders  understand  this. 
They  believe  and  tremble.  Their  fear  of  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  "  is 
not  an  idle  or  childish  one,  but  a  rational  fear,  springing  from  a  con- 
viction that  the  civilization  and  Christianity  of  the  world  are  aoainst 


92  THE    STATE    OF   POLITICAL   PARTIES. 

them,  and  that  the»lights  which  they  are  kindling  cannot  be  ex- 
tinguished. Hence  their  present  exasperation.  They  are  begin- 
ning to  learn  that  agitation  will  have  its  way,  and  that  every 
attempt  to  fetter  it  only  aggravates  the  evil  intended  to  be  assuaged. 
They  find  that  they  have  verged  upon  a  new  era,  in  which  their 
beloved  institution,  stripped  of  its  long  permitted  immunity  from 
the  right  of  search,  is  to  be  scourged  from  its  hiding-place  and 
compelled  to  stand  up  in  its  unveiled  ugliness  before  the  judgment- 
seat  of  the  world. 

Mrs.  Stowe  has  impressively  taught  them  this  lesson.  Her 
book  has  proved  the  forerunner  of  an  agitation  that  no  human 
power  can  control,  and  in  which  slaveholders  themselves  have 
been  forced,  in  self-defense,  to  do  their  part.  To  counteract  the 
wonderful  effects  of  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin/'  a  work  is  duly  prepared 
and  sent  forth  from  the  South,  entitled,  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  as  it 
is  ;  "  but  notwithstanding  its  deceptive  title  and  pictorial  advan- 
tages, it  seems  quietly  to  have  sunk  into  its  grave,  without  any 
other  result  than  somewhat  to  increase  the  popularity  of  the  book 
it  was  intended  to  destroy.  Then  we  have  "  Marcus  Warland," 
a  tale  of  the  South,  by  Mrs.  Caroline  Lee  Hentz,  who  says  of  her 
work,  "  A  native  of  the  North,  and  a  dweller  of  the  South,  with 
affections  strongly  clinging  to  both  of  the  beautiful  divisions  of  our 
country,  I  trust  that  I  have  brought  to  the  task  an  unprejudiced 
mind,  a  truthful  spirit,  and  an  honest  and  earnest  purpose."  She 
then  proceeds  to  picture  slavery  as  a  most  delightful  institution, 
prolific  in  all  the  higher  virtues,  and  the  bond  of  which  is  one  of 
"  affection,  gratitude,  tenderness,  and  esteem."  Another  work  is 
sent  forth  entitled  "Uncle  Tom  in  England;  or,  a  Proof  that  Black 
is  White :  a  Sequel  to  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  which  is  filled  with 
the  usual  twaddle  of  slaveholders  about  the  poverty  and  wretched- 
ness of  the  laboring  masses  where  slavery  is  unknown.  Mr.  J. 
Thornton  Randolph  favors  us  with  a  work  entitled  "  The  Cabin 
and  the  Parlor ;  or,  Slaves  and  Masters,"  abounding  in  similar 
arguments,  and  treating  at  considerable  length  of  the  wretched 
condition  of  the  free  negroes  jn  our  Northern  States.  Mrs.  Sarah 
J.  Hale,  about  the  same  time,  resurrects  from  a  sleep  of  twenty- 
five  years  a  book  which  she  sends  forth  under  the  title  of  "  North- 
wood,"  as  an  additional  auxiliary  in  the  great  work  of  suppressing 
agitation.  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  contrasted  with  Buckingham 
Hall,"  is  another  work,  similar  in  character  and  spirit  to  those  I 
have  named.  I  may  next  mention  "  The  Lofty  and  the  Lowly  ;  or, 
Good  in  All,  and  None  All   Good,"  by  Miss   Mcintosh,  who   de- 


THE   STATE    OF   POLITICAL   PARTIES.  93 

clares  that  she,  too,  loves  all  of  these  United  States.     Her  object, 
she  says,  is  to  give  "  a  true   and  loving  portraiture  of  the  social 
characteristics"  of  both  sections  of  our  country  ;  and  she  proceeds' 
to  depict  the  slaveholder  as  all  that  is  noble  and   heroic  in  human 
character,  and  slavery  itself  as  the  blessed  thing  which  it  seems 
to  a  Southern  fanatic,   whilst  all  her  villains  are  from  the  North. 
Among  the  replies  to  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  I  must  not  omit  to 
mention  one  by  "  A  Carolinian,"  which  for   a  Southern  work,  is 
moderate  and  rather  deprecatory  in   its   tone,  conceding  much  of 
the  ground  occupied  by  anti-slavery  men.     In  order  to  counteract 
his  agitation,  "  A  North  Carolinian  "  has  ably  replied  to  it.     The 
Abolitionists  are  overtaken  by  an  awful  visitation  in  a  work  entitled 
"  Aunt  Fillis's  Cabin  ;  or,  Southern  Life  as  it  is,"  by  Mrs.  Mary 
H.  Eastman.     She  affirms  that  slavery  is  "authorized  by  God,  per- 
mitted by  Jesus  Christ,  sanctioned  by  the  Apostles,  and  maintained 
by  good  men  in  all  ages,"  and  that   she   is   "  utterly  opposed  to 
amalgamation,  root  and   branch."     Recently,  a  most  remarkable 
book  has  made  its  appearance,  entitled  "  A  Choice  of  Evils  ;  or, 
Thirteen  Years  in  the  South,  by  a  Northern  Man."     Its  author  is 
a  Mr.  Hooker,  of  Philadelphia.    Among  other  things,  he  astonishes 
the  world  with  the  discovery  that  slavery  is  not  only  an  unspeak- 
able blessing,  but  a  great  "  missionary  institution  for  the  conversion 
of  the  heathen." 

So  goes  the  agitation  in  the  South.     But  it  rages   in   the   North 
also.     Hildreth's  "  White  Slave,"  a  work  of  great  power,  is  hav- 
ing a  decided  run,  not  only  at  home  but  across   the  water.     "  A 
Peep   into    Uncle    Tom's   Cabin,"   by   Aunt   Mary,  designed  for 
juvenile  readers,  is  destined  to  a  good  service,  whilst  the  "  Key," 
recently  from  the  press,  will  probably  meet  with  as  warm  a  recep- 
tion as  that  work  itself,  and  must  exert  a  powerful  influence.     In 
further  proof  of  the  epidemic  character  of  agitation  I  might  men- 
tion the  publication  of  a  third  edition  of  "  Cousin  Frank's  House- 
hold ;   or,  Scenes  in  the  Old  Dominion,"  by  Pocahontas  ;  "  Manuel 
Pereira  ;  or,  the  Sovereign  Rule  of  South  Carolina,  with  Views  of 
Southern  Laws,  Life,  and  Hospitality,"  by  F.  C.  Adams;  "  Uncle 
Tom  at    Home:    a    Review    of  the    Reviewers   of   Uncle    Tom's 
Cabin,"  by  the  same  writer  ;  the  "  Writings  of  Judge  Jay  on  the 
Slavery  Question  ;  "  a  volume  of  speeches  by  the  Hon.  Joshua  R. 
Giddings  ;  "Sumner's  White  Slavery  in  the  Barbary  States;"  a 
work  by  William  Goodell,  entitled  "  Slavery  and  Anti  Slavery  :  a 
History  of  the  Great  Struggle  in  both  Hemispheres,  with  a  View 
of  the  Slavery  Question  in  the  United  States ;  "  and  another  work 


94  THE    STATE   OF   POLITICAL   PARTIES. 

by  the  same  author,  entitled  "  The  American  Slave  Code,  in 
Theory  and  Practice,  its  Distinctive  Features  shown  by  its  Stat- 
utes, Judicial  Decisions,  and  Illustrated  Facts."  The  newspapers 
and  reviews  of  our  country,  both  in  the  free  and  slave  States,  are 
freighted  with  the  new  literature.  The  "  Literary  World  "  for 
some  time  endeavored  to  ignore  it,  but  was  finally  compelled  to 
notice  "  the  Uncle  Tom  epidemic,"  and  to  attempt  a  solution  of  it. 
It  was  evidently  puzzled,  and  asks,  "  Was  there  never  a  book  be- 
fore ?  Has  the  world  ne\er  been  blessed  with  genius,  or  has  art 
striven  in  vain  until  now,  and  has  printing  been  a  dead  letter,  and 
have  mankind,  aroused  by  Uncle  Tom  from  a  sleep  of  two  cen- 
turies, awakened  at  this  late  hour,  for  the  first  time,  to  the  fact 
that  there  are  books  to  read  ?  "  It  then  goes  on  to  confess  that 
the  "  multitudinous"  success  of  "  Uncle  Tom"  is  to  be  accounted 
for  mainly  "  by  the  enthusiasm  in  behalf  of  the  cause  in  support  of 
which  it  has  been  written,"  that  of  "  slave  emancipation  !  "  How 
very  consoling  to  its  finality  proclivities !  "  Graham's  Magazine  " 
has  been  in  great  travail  of  spirit,  whilst  its  bad  temper  and  coarse 
language  have  called  down  upon  it  a  broadside  of  artillery  from 
the  liberal  press.  In  the  mean  time,  the  Duchess  of  Sutherland  and 
other  distinguished  English  ladies,  having  published  an  address  to 
the  people  of  this  country  calmly  expressing  their  views  upon  the 
question  of  American  slavery,  Mrs.  Julia  Gardner  Tyler  became 
intensely  "  agitated,"  and  in  order  to  silence  the  Duchess  and 
"  the  rest  of  mankind,"  published  an  address  in  reply.  Several  of 
our  Xorthern  papers,  desiring  to  aid  Mrs.  Julia  in  the  work  of  put- 
ting down  agitation,  copied  her  address  ;  and  some  of  them,  as  the 
"  New  York  Tribune,"  and  the  "  Saturday  Visitor,"  held  it  up  to 
the  scorn  and  contempt  of  all  sensible  and  decent  people. 

Thus  everybody  is  agitating.  The  anti-slavery  man  agitates, 
because  he  believes  the  truth  is  on  his  side,  and  that  that  has  noth- 
ing to  fear,  and  everything  to  hope,  from  the  freest  discussion. 
The  pro-slavery  man  agitates,  because  that  is  his  method  of  con- 
vincing everybody  that  agitation  is  a  curse  and  a  crime.  Agitation 
pervades  the  common  air.  It  meets  us  around  the  fireside,  in  the 
social  circle,  in  our  stage-coaches  and  railway  cars,  and  on  board 
our  steamboats.  The  old  and  the  young,  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the 
wise  and  the  simple,  are  alike  its  victims.  It  has  acquired  a  sort  of 
omnipresence.  The  very  effort  to  escape  it  only  seems  to  draw  it 
nearer  to  us  ;  and  were  it  possible  to  banish  the  contagion  entirely 
from  our  thoughts  it  would  be  at  the  cost  of  our  moral  annihi- 
lation.     Its    abode    is  wherever  human    hearts  beat :  and  while 


THE    STATE   OF   POLITICAL   PARTIES.  95 

oppression  lasts,  it  can  only  cease  with  their  pulsations.  Never 
has  there  been  such  a  tide  in  our  affairs  as  at  this  time.  Never 
have  the  enemies  of  slavery  had  such  reasons  to  feel  encouraged 
as  the  facts  I  have  presented  furnish.  Never  has  the  slaveholder 
seen  his  day  of  judgment  so  visibly  and  rapidly  approaching. 
Every  attempt  to  cloak  the  hideous  deformity  of  the  great  dragon 
of  slavery  only  seems  to  unmask  it  to  the  gaze  of  the  world. 
Every  diabolical  device  designed  to  crush  our  cause,  is  turned  into 
a  weapon  of  aggression  and  defense.  Slaveholders  themselves  are 
now  among  our  most  efficient  helpers.  Their  unhallowed  rule  has 
at  length  set  the  world  to  thinking,  its  great  heart  to  beating,  and 
its  great  voice  to  agitating,  whilst  their  intended  finality  has  been 
hissed  out  of  the  land.  And  yet  President  Pierce,  in  his  inaugu- 
ral, tells  us  that  he  fervently  hopes  the  question  is  at  rest !  Let 
us  thank  God  for  such  a  rest  as  the  world  is  now  having,  and  pray 
for  its  increase  ;  and  as  respects  slaveholders  and  doughfaces,  let 
us  take  comfort  from  the  Scriptural  assurance  that  there  is  no  rest 
for  the  wicked. 

As  an  additional  fact  which  I  think  encouraging  allow  me  to 
observe,  in  conclusion,  that  the  very  arguments  of  pro-slavery 
men  in  defense  of  their  cause  are  calculated  to  help  us.  Take,  for 
example,  their  current  balderdash  about  the  pauperism  and  squalid- 
ness  abounding  in  the  free  States  and  in  England.  Could  any- 
thing possibly  be  more  silly  or  inconclusive  ?  Suppose  we  admit 
that  our  Southern  friends  speak  the  truth  without  exaggeration, 
and  that  we  really  have  in  our  midst  the  wretchedness  and  the 
loathsome  social  disorders  which  they  charge  upon  us  ?  What 
then  ?  Is  the  character  of  slavery  changed  ?  If  it  be  a  God- 
defying  villainy,  does  it  acquire  the  divine  sanction  and  become 
transfigured  into  an  angel  of  light  by  finding  somewhere  else  as 
unmitigated  a  curse  as  itself?  See  how  the  monster  brands  itself 
by  ransacking  the  civilized  world  for  some  sink  of  depravity  and 
woe  with  which  it  may  ask  a  comparison,  and  behind  which  it  seeks 
a  shelter  !  Such  an  argument  in  defense  of  slavery  is  infamous, 
besides  being  the  baldest  sophistry.  The  free  States  do  not  justify 
the  social  evils  that  have  grown  up  in  their  midst.  They  do  not 
cling  to  them  as  to  the  corner-stone  of  the  Republic.  They  do 
not  invoke  in  their  behalf  the  divine  sanction,  nor  threaten  to  dis- 
solve the  Union  if  they  should  be  abolished.  It  is  especially  true 
of  anti-slavery  men,  that  whilst  they  wage  war  against  chattel 
slavery  in  the  South,  they  Wage  war  against  wages  slavery  in  the 
North.     They  are  the  advocates  of  land  reform  ;  of  the  rights  of 


96  THE   STATE   OF  POLITICAL  PARTIES. 

labor  in  opposition  to  the  exactions  of  capital,  and  are  exerting 
themselves  to  the  utmost  in  the  cause  of  down-trodden  humanity, 
whether  white  or  black,  or  whatever  the  form  of  degradation 
under  which  it  groans.  This  also  I  believe  to  be  true  of  English 
agitators. 

Again,  consider  the  argument  of  Southern  men  and  their  minions 
in  behalf  of  their  pet  scheme  of  African  colonization.  They  talk 
to  us  about  the  "unprovability  "  of  the  negro  race.  They  deny  its 
inferiority  to  the  Anglo-Saxon.  They  tell  us  that  Greece  and 
Rome  borrowed  their  civilization  from  the  Egyptians,  who  wrere  a 
colored  people,  and  that  Egypt  itself  was  founded  by  colonies  from 
Ethiopia.  They  affirm  that  neither  of  the  colonies  of  Jamestown 
and  Plymouth,  at  the  end  of  twenty-five  years,  had  acquired  so 
strong  a  position  as  Liberia  has  done  in  the  same  period,  although 
the  colony  is  chiefly  made  up  of  Guinea  negroes,  who  are  the  low- 
est type  of  the  colored  race.  But  if  all  this  be  true,  with  what  a 
trumpet  voice  does  it  proclaim  the  infernal  character  of  American 
slavery,  and  of  that  prejudice  which  upholds  it,  whilst  it  would 
banish  to  Africa  the  free  man  of  color  whose  missionary  labors  are 
so  much  needed  here  !  Such  facts,  coming  from  the  pro-slavery 
party  in  this  country,  are  astounding.  They  cannot  fail  to  strike 
the  common  sense  of  the  most  unreflecting  as  virtually  surrender- 
ing the  main  prop  of  their  system. 

But  observe  now  how  this  colonization,  missionary  argument 
tallies  with  another  Southern  argument  which  is  attracting  some 
attention,  namely,  that  the  negro  is  not  a  man  ;  that  he  belongs 
not  to  the  human  species,  and  is  too  indolent  to  take  care  of  him- 
self, and  too  hopelessly  stupid  to  exercise  the  rights  of  citizenship. 
Here  is  a  direct  conflict.  But  these  arguments  not  only  contradict 
each  other,  but  condemn  themselves.  If  the  African  is  a  man, 
and  the  natural  equal  of  the  white  man,  only  wanting  equal  oppor- 
tunities, he  should  be  free,  whether  in  America  or  Liberia.  If  he 
is  not  a  human,  but  an  animal,  he  should  not  be  subject  to  law. 
He  should  not  be  hung  for  murder,  nor  allowed  to  marry,  nor  hold 
and  transmit  property,  nor  be  baptized  as  a  Christian,  nor  sent  to 
Liberia  as  a  missionary  ;  nor  should  men  be  hung  as  pirates  for 
making  him  an  article  of  traffic  on  the  high  seas.  These  things 
are  most  palpable.  Such  wretched,  clumsy,  contradictory  argu- 
ments in  defense  of  slavery  can  only  serve  to  expose  it,  and  thus 
to  strengthen  the  hands  of  its  foes. 

Next,  look  at  the  Bible  argument  in  support  of  slavery.  We 
are  told,  though  not  so  frequently  as  formerly,  that  slavery  is  sane- 


THE    STATE   OF   POLITICAL   PARTIES.  97 

tioned  in  both  Testaments,  from  Genesis  to  Revelation,  and  thus 
established  by  express  decree  of  Almighty  God.  Such  language 
has  been  constantly  in  the  mouths  of  Southern  politicians  and 
divines.  It  is  the  language  of  the  Democratic  party  in  this  State, 
speaking  through  its  central  organ  published  in  this  city.  Now 
this  argument  necessarily  suggests  the  inquiry,  why  our  Southern 
brethren  do  not  place  the  Bible  at  once  in  the  hands  of  their  three 
millions  of  slaves  ?  They  are  neither  an  irreverent  nor  an  unbeliev- 
ing race,  and  if  the  Scriptures  plainly  teach  the  divinity  of  slavery, 
that  would  be  the  way  to  insure  its  strength  and  quiet  agitation. 
Why  not  unfetter  our  Bible,  and  Missionary,  and  Sunday-school 
Associations,  and  make  every  hut  on  every  Southern  plantation 
missionary  ground  ?  Why  punish  men  as  felons  for  giving  the 
Bible  to  the  slave  ?  The  plain  truth  is,  that  those  who  employ 
this  argument  have  no  faith  in  it.  Their  actions  proclaim  them  in- 
sincere, and  the  time  is  approaching  when  they  will  be  ashamed  of 
it.  They  know  that  the  religion  taught  by  Christ  and  his  Apostles 
is  a  religion  of  freedom,  and  that  were  even  the  servitude  which 
prevailed  among  the  Jews  introduced  into  this  country,  and  divinely 
sanctioned  as  an  American  institution,  it  would  speedily  "  let  the 
oppressed  go  free." 

Again,  in  the  publication  already  referred  to  by  Mr.  Hooker, 
there  is  a  chapter  on  "  the  pleasures  of  slavery."  We  are  told 
that  the  Southern  slave  is  not  merely  contented,  but  "  he  is  a  joy- 
ous fellow."  "  In  willing  and  faithful  subjection  to  a  benignant 
and  protecting  power,  and  that  visible  to  his  senses,  he  leans  upon 
it  in  complete  and  sure  confidence,  as  a  trusting  child  holds  on  to 
the  hand  of  his  father,  and  passes  joyously  along  the  thronged  and 
jostling  way  where  he  would  not  dare  to  be  left  alone."  Mr. 
Hooker  says,  "  His  are  the  thoughts  that  make  glad  the  heart  of 
the  cared-for  child,  led  by  paternal  hand,"  and  that  "  of  all  people 
in  the  world,  the  pleasures  of  the  Southern  slaves  seem,  as  they 
really  are,  most  unalloyed."  How  very  delightful !  But  several 
disturbing  queries  bolt  in  upon  the  mind.  How  does  such  a  state 
of  earthly  bliss  in  its  highest  form  square  with  the  Southern  doc- 
trine that  the  African  is  under  the  curse  of  God,  and  that  slavery 
is  that  curse  ?  How  does  it  happen  that  such  multitudes  are  flee- 
ing at  every  peril  from  this  blessed  state,  and  that  those  who  would 
persuade  us  that  the  slave  is  thus  happy  are  so  clamorous  for  an 
efficient  fugitive  law,  that  shall  arm  the  whole  land  in  the  work  of 
guarding  his  escape  ?  How  is  it  that  such  an  institution  works  so 
admirably,  when  all  history  and  experience  prove   the  tendency  of 

7 


98  THE    STATE    OF   POLITICAL   PARTIES. 

uncontrolled  power  to  abuse  ?  Why  do  our  instinctive  feelings 
revolt  at  the  bare  thought  of  becoming  slaves  ourselves,  or  of  hav- 
ing our  wives  and  children  in  that  condition  ?  Why  do  not  slave- 
holders themselves  submit  to  the  patriarchal  institution,  and  thus 
bask  in  its  ineffable  beatitudes  ?  I  need  not  say  that  such  ques- 
tions more  than  answer  such  arguments. 

I  have  time  to  refer  to  only  one  additional  argument.  The  same 
writer,  as  I  have  already  stated,  regards  slavery  as  a  grand  mis- 
sionary institution  for  the  conversion  of  the  heathen.  He  tells  us 
that  in  the  course  of  more  than  fifty  years,  all  the  missionary 
societies  of  our  country,  of  all  denominations,  have  converted  some 
fiftv  thousand  heathen  to  Christianity,  in  various  parts  of  the 
world.  He  then  computes  that  American  slavery  has  converted 
more  than  ten  times  that  number  ;  that  is  to  say,  more  than  half  a 
million  of  slaves  in  the  Southern  States.  He  says,  "  I  have  good 
reason  to  suppose  that  more  than  half  a  million  of  the  slaves  of 
the  South  are  regular  members  of  Christian  congregations."  What 
a  peculiar  argument !  Five  hundred  thousand  men  and  women 
converted  to  Christianity  by  an  institution  which  robs  them  during 
life  of  the  fruits  of  their  labor,  —  sells  them  on  the  auction-block 
like  so  much  cotton  or  tobacco,  —  separates  husbands  and  wives, 
parents  and  children,  —  blots  out  of  its  vocabulary  family,  home, 
kindred  ;  tramples  the  institution  of  marriage  under  foot,  scatters 
licentiousness  and  concubinage  over  the  land,  and  closes  the  Bible 
against  them  as  a  sealed  book!  I  submit  that  this  is  not  so  much 
a  conversion  of  heathen,  as  a  heathen  conversion  ;  for  certainly  the 
heathenism  preponderates  strongly  on  the  side  of  the  missionary. 
Consider  this  argument.  If  it  be  sound,  instead  of  raising  money 
to  defray  the  expense  of  transporting  our  free  colored  men  to 
Liberia,  we  should  enslave  them  at  home,  and   expend   our  spare 

funds  in  hiring  slaveholders  to  go  there  and  establish  their  mission- 
ed & 

ary  institution.  Why  have  a  free  colony  in  Liberia,  when  slavery 
is  so  much  better  fitted  to  Christianize  the  heathen  of  the  African 
Continent  ?  To  carry  on  this  great  work  efficiently  the  civilized 
nations  of  the  world  should  unite  in  repealing  their  laws  making 
the  slave-trade  piracy,  and  place  it  on  a  permanent  basis,  encour- 
aging it  by  bounties,  and  fostering  it  by  every  means  in  their 
power.  As  charity  should  begin  at  home,  every  Christian  nation 
should  introduce  domestic  slavery  as  its  home  missionary  establish- 
ment ;  and  as  this  would  give  life  to  the  foreign  slave-trade,  it 
would  answer  the  purpose  of  a  foreign  establishment  also.  Instead 
of  sending    missionaries    to    the   heathen,  we   could   then,   as   the 


THE    STATE    OF   POLITICAL   PARTIES.  99 

"  National  Era  "  has  observed,  bring  the  heathen  to  the  missionary. 
Our  present  expensive  operations  might  be  abandoned,  as  Mr. 
Hooker  tells  us  they  are  not  doing  a  tenth  part  of  the  service  to 
the  Christian  world  which  American  slavery  alone  is  rendering. 
All  our  Northern  States,  of  course,  should  introduce  slavery  forth- 
with ;  and  when  this  nation,  cooperating  with  others,  shall  have 
planted  this  great  missionary  power  in  every  part  of  the  known 
world,  the  millennium  will  be  "  a  fixed  fact." 

Mr.  Hooker's  book  is  truly  a  sublime  and  blessed  performance. 
Whilst  our  country  is  threatened   with   the  horrors  of  universal 
agitation,  and  our  pro-slavery  friends,  quaking  with  the  dread  of 
"  Uncle  Tom,"  are  ready  to  cry  out  "  What  shall  we  do  to  be 
saved  ?  "  it  bursts  upon   their   affrighted  vision  with   a   discovery 
which    brings    peace    to    their    souls,   solves    the  vexed  riddle  of 
slavery,  and   scourges  the  Uncle  Tom   literature  from  the  world. 
Shall  we  not  rejoice  ?     We  "  fanatics  "  can  now  understand  many 
things  which  before  were  shrouded  in  darkness.     We  can  see  why 
President  Pierce  says  in  his  inaugural  that  he  believes  slavery  is 
recognized  in  the  Constitution,  and  that  the  compromise  laws  are 
to  be   "  unhesitatingly  "   and   "  cheerfully "   carried    out.      He    is 
doubtless  prompted  by  the  piety  which  wells  up  in  his  great  Chris- 
tian  heart,  by  his   desire   to  see   the  heathen   soundly  converted 
through  this  divinely  ordained   missionary.     We  can  understand 
perfectly  why  the  Bible  should  not  be  given  to  three  millions  of 
slaves.     It  would  obviously  hinder  their  conversion  to  Christianity, 
by  impairing  the  efficiency  of  its  grand  missionary  agency.     We 
can  see  how  wicked  it  is  for  slaves  to  run  away  from  their  masters. 
It  is  simply  running  away  from  their  missionaries.     It  shows  them 
to   be  stiff-necked  barbarians,  stubbornly  resisting   the   touches  of 
divine  grace,  as  well  as  of  the  slave-whip,  whilst  it  enjoins  it  upon 
us,  as  Ave  love  the  cause  of  religion,  to  unite  with  alacrity  in  send- 
ing them  back  to  the  tender  mercies  of  an  institution  so  abundantlv 
able  to  convert  their  heathen   souls.     It  reconciles   us   to  the  fine 
and  imprisonment  meted  out  to  us,  if  we  feed   or  shelter  the  fugi- 
tive.    In  such  infidel  acts  we  grossly  offend  religion,  by  obstruct- 
ing  the  propagation   of  the    Gospel.     It   explains   the  law  lately 
enacted  in  Illinois,  which   offers   a  bribe  of  twenty-five  dollars  to 
any  of  her  white  saints  who  will  engage  in  the  missionary  work  of 
enslaving  any  free  man  of  color  who  may  enter   the   State.     This 
zeal  for  the   spread  of  Christianity  in  that  great   commonwealth, 
awakened  through  our  missionary  institution,  is  without  a  parallel, 
even  in  Indiana.     Illinois  is  now  far  in  the  van  of  all   her  North- 


100  THE    STATE   OF   POLITICAL   PARTIES. 

ern  sisters  in  her  practical  sympathy  for  the  heathen  without  her 
gates. 

Mr.  Hooker,  of  course,  would  brand  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  "  as 
unutterably  wicked.  It  must  be  the  enemy  of  souls.  It  is  an 
infidel  book,  because  it  stabs  Christianity  to  the  heart  by  destroy- 
ing its  chosen  missionary  weapon.  In  writing  it  Mrs.  Stowe  must 
have  been  given  over  to  hardness  of  heart,  and  wholly  taken  cap- 
tive by  the  devil ;  for  her  book  is  altogether  wanting  in  that  real, 
missionary,  "  evangelical  "  unction,  in  which  Mr.  Hooker's  labors 
seem  to  have  been  baptized.  His  theory  likewise  elucidates  the 
principle  upon  which  the  Free  Democratic  members  of  the  United 
States  Senate  must  have  been  excluded  from  its  business  com- 
mittees. Senator  Jesse  D.  Bright,  whose  fervent  desire  for  the 
salvation  of  souls  it  would,  perhaps,  be  impious  to  question,  pub- 
licly pronounced  these  Senators  "  outside  of  any  healthy  political 
organization."'  This,  no  doubt,  was  prompted  by  the  godly  yearn- 
ing of  his  soul  for  the  conversion  of  the  African  heathen.  He 
himself,  I  believe,  is  rearing  and  converting  quite  a  number  on 
his  Kentucky  plantation.  He  was  therefore  interested  both  as  a 
saint  and  a  sinner  in  the  grand  missionary  institution.  Hale,  and 
Chase,  and  Sumner,  did  not  believe  in  missions.  They  lacked  faith 
in  "  the  preservation,  propagation,  and  perpetuation  of  slavery," 
as  a  divine  scheme  for  converting  the  heathen  world.  And 
although  no  man  could  say  aught  in  derogation  of  their  talents, 
their  patriotism,  or  the  purity  of  their  lives,  yet  as  they  did  not 
believe  in  the  propagation  of  the  gospel  according  to  St.  Jesse,  they 
were  unorthodox  outsiders,  and  must  be  excommunicated  as  un- 
clean !  Who  that  knows  anything  of  our  distinguished  Senator 
could  ever  have  comprehended  this  without  the  pious  solution  of 
Mr.  Hooker?  Let  us  profoundly  thank  him  both  for  his  piety  and 
his  logic  ;  and  let  us  thank  all  the  foes  of  freedom  for  the  pjarino; 
sophisms  to  which  they  have  been  compelled  to  resort  by  the  blows 
we  have  dealt. 

My  friends,  I  must  not  detain  you  longer.  Were  it  right  to  do 
so,  1  could  refer  to  many  other  facts  prophetic  of  the  triumph  of 
our  cause.  Calhoun,  Clay,  and  Webster,  the  idolized  leaders  of 
the  great  hosts  of  slavery,  have  all  gone  to  their  reckoning.  The 
mad  and  mercenary  cry  of  "  danger  to  the  Union  "  has  been 
shamed  into  silence  by  the  sober  second  thought  of  the  people. 
The  multitudinous  heaps  of  "  lower  law "  sermons,  scattered 
through  the  land  two  or  three  years  ago  by  atheistical  doctors  of 
divinity,  have  gone  down  to  a  grave  of  infamy  from  which  there 


THE    STATE    OF   POLITICAL   PARTIES.  101 

can  be  no  resurrection.  And  our  Fugitive  Slave  Act  itself,  with  all 
Hs  villainy,  not  only  has  the  credit  of  giving  birth  to  "  Uncle  Tom," 
but  of  extending  and  vitalizing  a  great  system  of  subterranean 
railroads,  all  the  lines  of  which  are  now  striking  larger  dividends 
than  at  any  time  since  the  formation  of  the  government.  In  view 
of  such  facts,  upon  which  I  cannot  now  enlarge,  and  of  the  glori- 
ous future  toward  which  they  are  hastening  us,  suffer  me  to 
exhort  you  to  courage,  constancy,  and  an  unfaltering  faith.  Let 
us  remember  that  the  beautiful  horizon  of  light  which  now  salutes 
our  vision  has  been  educed  from  a  season  of  darkness  and  gloom  ; 
and  whilst  we  feel  encouraged  by  our  progress  thus  far,  by  the 
justice  of  our  cause,  and  by  the  smiles  of  our  Maker,  let  us  conse- 
crate ourselves. anew  to  the  great  service  which  lies  before  us. 


THE  SLAVERY   QUESTION   IN  ITS   PRESENT 
RELATIONS  TO  AMERICAN  POLITICS. 

DELIVERED  AT  INDIANAPOLIS,  JUNE  29,  1855. 

[The  final  disruption  of  the  "Whig  party,  followed  by  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise  and  the  simultaneous  birth  of  Know  Nothing-ism,  inaugurated  a  strange 
political  dispensation  with  which  the  speech  here  reprinted  deals  unsparingly.  It 
appeared  at  the  time  in  the  "National  Era,"  and  "Facts  for  the  People,"  and  was 
addressed  especially  to  the  anti-slavery  men  of  Indiana,  whose  policy  it  rebnked ;  but 
its  fearless  arraignment  of  the  Know  Nothing  movement,  and  of  the  slippery  tactics  of 
the  "  Anti-Nebraska"  leaders,  gave  still  further  and  more  general  offense.  The  mad- 
ness of  the  times,  however,  soon  passed  away,  and  the  speech  is  now  submitted  as  its 
own  best  vindication.] 

Mr.  Pkesident  and  Fellow-cittzens,  —  I  confess  to  some 
degree  of  embarrassment  in  approaching  the  discussion  of  the 
slavery  question  at  this  crisis  in  its  history.  It  has  assumed  an 
attitude  so  novel  and  peculiar  in  its  relations  to  American  politics, 
and  is  so  complicated  with  strange  and  alien  elements,  that  I  can 
scarcely  hope  to  present  my  views  of  present  duty  without  giving 
offense  to  some,  and  perhaps  arousing  a  certain  antagonism  among 
those  who  have  heretofore  walked  together  as  brethren.  My  task 
is  a  delicate  one,  and  I  regret,  sincerely,  the  causes  that  have  made 
it  so.  I  shall,  however,  in  the  exercise  of  free  speech,  and  with 
that  plainness  which  I  am  accustomed  to  employ,  give  utterance 
to  my  own  deliberate  convictions,  holding  no  man  or  party  respon- 
sible for  them,  and  only  asking,  in  their  behalf,  such  consideration 
as  they  may  be  entitled  to  receive  at  your  hands.  I  desire  to 
address  myself,  to-day,  to  anti-slavery  men  ;  and  I  begin  by  re- 
marking that  the  grand  obstacle  to  the  spread  of  free  principles  is 
the  lack  of  a  just  comprehension  of  our  movement.  It  is  not 
only  grossly  misconceived  by  the  great  body  of  the  people,  but 
many,  I  fear,  who  are  set  apart  by  common  consent  as  its  peculiar 
friends,  either  do  not  understand,  or  perceive  but  dimly,  its  real 
magnitude.  The  cause  of  Human  Rights  is  not  one  to  be  dragged 
down  to  the  level  of  our  current  politics,  and  confounded  with  the 
strife  of  parties  and  the  schemes  of  place-hunters.  It  is  not  to  be 
hawked  about  in  the  political  market,  and  advocated  with  a  zeal 


SLAVERY   AND   POLITICS.  103 

which  instantly  expires  when  the  temporary  occasion  of  it  has  dis- 
appeared. We  dishonor  the  cause,  and  bring  our  own  integrity  into 
question,  when  we  suffer  it  to  be  placed  alongside  the  compara- 
tively trifling  and  ephemeral  questions  of  the  day,  and  to  be  dealt 
with  as  such,  instead  of  elevating  it  to  the  dignity  of  a  great  moral 
enterprise,  to  be  steadily  prosecuted,  whether  honor,  advantage, 
and  immediate  success,  on  the  one  hand,  or  obloquy,  suffering,  and 
present  defeat,  on  the  other,  shall  be  the  result  of  our  fidelity. 
The  question  of  human  freedom  is  not  a  question  of  one  nation, 
or  one  race,  but  of  all  nations  and  all  races.  Ours  is  preeminently 
a  Christian  movement.  Its  grand  idea,  its  central,  life-giving 
principle,  is  the  equal  brotherhood  of  all  men  before  their  common 
Father  in  heaven  ;  and  its  mission  is  the  practical  vindication  of 
this  truth.  We  are  to  make  it  the  animating  spirit  of  the  religion, 
the  morality,  and  the  politics  of  this  nation.  We  are  to  rescue 
the  doctrine  of  a  common  brotherhood  from  the  limbo  of  unmean- 
ing abstractions,  and  make  it  incarnate  in  the  popular  heart. 
"  One  God,  one  humanity,  one  love  from  all  for  all,"  —  this  is  the 
platform  of  the  abolitionist,  and  this  is  the  platform  of  the  Chris- 
tian. The  work  we  are  striving  to  accomplish,  therefore,  coincides 
with  Christianity  itself.  The  obstacles  which  oppose  the  liberation 
of  three  and  a  half  millions  of  American  slaves,  are  the  obstacles 
which  oppose  every  enterprise  looking  to  the  reign  of  "  peace  on 
earth  and  good-will  to  men."  Contempt  for  humanity  is  the  foun- 
dation of  slavery,  and  of  every  species  of  oppression  and  wrong ; 
respect  for  humanity  is  the  foundation  of  freedom,  and  the  grand 
condition  of  the  world's  advancement.  Abrogate  the  infidel  law  of 
Hate,  which  regards  man  as  a  child  of  the  devil,  and  enthrone  in  its 
stead  the  Christian  law  of  Love,  which  reverences  him  as  the  child 
and  moral  likeness  of  his  Maker,  and  not  only  will  the  chains  of 
the  slave  fall  asunder,  but  the  curses  of  land  monopoly,  the  cruel 
exactions  of  capital  over  labor,  the  cold-blooded  rapacity  of  avarice, 
and  every  other  form  of  "  man's  inhumanity  to  man,"  will  be  sent 
howling  from  the  face  of  the  earth. 

Here,  Mr.  Chairman,  on  the  great  rock  of  Christianity,  and  on  no 
narrower  or  frailer  foundation,  should  we  erect  the  altar  of  freedom, 
and  offer  our  sacrifices.  This  is  the  only  true  stand-point  for  the 
anti-slavery  party  in  the  United  States,  and  we  should  resolutely 
and  unitedly  maintain  it,  in  the  face  of  all  opposition.  Principle 
and  policy  alike  require  that  we  stand  on  Christian  ground,  and  on 
no  account  should  we  forego  a  position  which  alone  can  render  our 
cause  impregnable,  and  which  is  so  much  needed  to  cheer  us  under 


104  SLAVERY  AND   POLITICS.      . 

the  many  discouragements  to  which  it  is  perpetually  subjected. 
We  are  branded  as  infidels.  Let  us  say  to  the  world  that  we  wage 
Avar  against  slavery  because  we  are  Christians,  and  that  to  us  right- 
fully belongs  the  prerogative  of  sitting  in  judgment  upon  the  pop- 
ular religion  of  the  country,  and  pronouncing  upon  it  according  to 
its  fidelity  or  its  infidelity  to  the  great  doctrine  of  human  brother- 
hood. We  are  upbraided  with  having  but  "  one  idea."  Let  us 
reply,  that  we  borrow  it  from  the  New  Testament,  in  which  we 
find  it  appealing  to  us  as  the  "  one  idea  "  of  the  founder  of  our 
religion,  and  that  that  idea  is  large  enough  to  comprehend  the 
moral  universe.  We  are  charged  with  an  undue  measure  of  zeal 
in  the  advocacy  of  our  cause.  Let  us  answer,  that  the  system  of 
American  slavery  is  the  liugest  and  most  frightful  denial  of  the 
central  truth  of  our  religious  faith,  the  most  atrocious  libel  upon 
justice  and  humanity,  that  now  confronts  Heaven  on  any  part  of 
our  globe.  We  are  reproached  with  our  weakness  as  a  party,  and 
sometimes  our  own  doubting  hearts  whisper  to  us  that  our  strug- 
gles have  proved  but  so  many  failures.  Let  us  remember,  that  so 
holy  an  enterprise  must  necessarily  encounter  every  form  of  human 
selfishness,  and ,  be  subject  to  those  conditions  by  which  every 
other  good  work  has  been  retarded  ;  that,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
it  can  only  keep  pace  with  the  gradual  but  slow  progress  of  Chris- 
tian principles  in  the  community  ;  and  while  we  thus  learn  a 
lesson  of  patience,  let  us  ever  bear  in  mind  that  Heaven  itself  is 
pledged  to  the  ultimate  success  of  our  sincere  endeavors. 

That  our  movement  is  not  understood,  not  uniformly  referred  to 
the  grand  principle  which  underlies  it,  seems  quite  evident,  from 
the  want  of  any  deep  and  pervading  conviction  of  the  wrongfulness 
of  slavery  among  the  people  of  the  free  States.  Our  abhorrence 
of  the  institution  is  from  the  lips,  and  not  from  the  heart.  We  do 
not  hate  it  with  an  earnest  and  robust  hatred,  that  goes  out  into 
deeds,  but  with  a  sickly  and  superficial  aversion  that  yields  no  re- 
sult, unless  it  be  to  debauch  the  conscience.  We  hate  the  negro 
with  a  practical  vengeance.  It  is  no  counterfeit,  no  mere  disguise, 
but  a  blighting,  scathing,  ever-present  hatred,  under  which  the  col- 
ored race  withers  and  is  consumed  in  our  midst.  Ask  the  people 
of  Indiana  if  they  hate  slavery',  and  they  will  point  you  to  their 
Constitution  and  laws  forbidding  colored  men  from  comincr  into  the 
State,  denying  those  who  are  in  the  right  of  suffrage,  taxing  them 
to  support  the  government  whilst  refusing  them  any  share  in  the 
school  fund,  forbidding  them  to  testify  in  our  courts,  and  even  ques- 
tioning their  right  to  travel  on  our  railways.     Ask  the  people  of 


»      SLAVERY   AND   POLITICS.  105 

Illinois  the  question,  and  they  will  point  to  a  still  blacker  code  than 
our  own.  Do  the  people  of  Ohio  hate  slavery  ?  The  General 
School  Board  of  the  chief  city  of  the  State  recently  sanctioned  the 
exclusion  of  a  zvhite  lad  from  one  of  its  schools,  because  one  thirty- 
second  part  of  the  blood  in  his  veins  was  understood  to  be  of  Afri- 
can extraction  !  Sir,  the  lamentable  truth  is,  that  the  unchristian 
spirit  of  Caste  is  the  dominant  spirit  in  the  religious,  political,  and 
social  institutions  of  the  non-slave-holding  States.  Has  not  every 
slaveholding  outrage  that  has  ever  yet  aroused  our  people  been 
summarily  followed  by  a  quiet  acquiescence?  And  would  this  be 
so,  if  there  were  any  deep  central  fire  of  anti-slavery  hatred  burn- 
ing in  our  hearts  ?  Does  it  not  prove  much  of  our  hostility  to  slav- 
ery to  be  a  frothy  and  evanescent  sentiment,  nursed  into  life  by 
our  politicians,  and  thrown  on  to  the  surface  by  a  temporary  swell 
of  popular  feeling? 

Nor  can  I  regard  the  late  Anti-Nebraska  excitement  as  proceed- 
ing from  any  more  radical  and  healthy  conviction.  It  seems  to  be 
prudently  following  in  the  line  of  its  precedents.  The  more  san- 
guine among  us,  I  am  aware,  have  regarded  the  repeal  of  the  Mis- 
souri Compromise  as  a  godsend.  They  have  argued  that  Northern 
endurance,  already  taxed  to  the  utmost,  would  sink  under  such 
a  weight ;  that  the  slave  power  would  thus  dig  its  own  grave  ;  and 
that  wicked  institutions  must  always  grow  to  their  full  stature,  and 
display  all  their  inherent  enormity,  before  men  will  earnestly  en- 
gage in  their  overthrow.  I  confess  I  cannot  feel  encouraged  by 
this  line  of  argument.  It  has  flavored  our  anti-slavery  dish  on 
other  occasions,  when  the  slave  interest  has  trampled  down  our 
rights.  It  has  no  just  application  to  the  contest  between  the  free 
and  the  slave  States;  for,  if  it  be  true  that  our  acquiescence  in  one 
scheme  of  agoression  emboldens  the  South  to  concoct  another  still 
more  flagrant  and  alarming,  it  is  likewise  jtrue  that  it  prepares  the 
North  to  submit  to  it.  The  enormity  of  slavery  is  lost  upon  us, 
when  displayed  by  such  a  process.  Not  submission  to  despotism, 
but  resistance,  is  the  true  method  of  deliverance  from  it.  We  need 
have  no  fears  that  the  devilish  attributes  of  slavery  will  not  be  ex- 
hibited, without  any  guilty  help  from  us.  The  Nebraska  and  Kan- 
sas Act  of  1854  is  a  natural  fruit  of  the  compromise  measures  of 
1850,  and  is  in  no  respect  more  flagitious  in  principle.  It  is  only 
a  sprout  from  Daniel  Webster's  grave.  The  anti-slavery  sentiment 
that  submitted  to  the  former  will  acquiesce  in  the  latter.  Indeed, 
the  very  ground  on  which  this  new  outrage  has  been  generally  op- 
posed, proves  our  repugnance  to  slavery  to  be  shallow  and  insincere. 


106  SLAVERY  AND  POLITICS.      • 

The  popular  argument  against  it  lias  been  "  its  breach  of  an  ancient 
and  solemn  compact,  made  for  the  security  of  freedom  north  of  the 
parallel  of  36°  30'  of  north  latitude."  Sir,  a  thoroughly  baptized 
anti-slavery  people  would  have  lost  sight  of  any  bargain  with  slav- 
ery, in  its  unhallowed  conspiracy  to  blast  an  empire  by  its  withering 
power.  I  oppose  slavery  upon  principle.  I  hold  it  to  be  wrong  in 
principle  for  one  man  to  be  the  owner  of  another,  to  deny  him  a 
fair  dav's  wages  for  a  fair  day's  work,  to  rob  him  of  the  holiest  ties  of 
life  and  sell  him  on  the  auction-block  as  a  chattel,  to  take  from 
him  his  Bible  and  close  against  him  the  avenues  of  knowledge,  to 
annihilate  the  institution  of  marriage  and  spread  licentiousness  and 
crime  over  the  land.  This  I  regard  as  unutterably  wicked,  inde- 
pendent of  any  compact,  or  compromise,  by  which  slavery  and 
freedom  may  have  assumed  to  dispose  of  their  possessions  according 
to  certain  geographical  lines.  Hence  I  hate  slavery  wherever  I 
can  find  it,  from  the  north  pole  down  to  thirty-six  degrees  and 
thirty  minutes  north  latitude  ;  and  when  I  get  there,  I  go  right  on 
hating  it  all  round  the  globe,  wherever  I  can  trace  its  slimy  foot- 
steps. I  confess  I  have  not  yet  mastered  the  slippery  philosophy 
by  which  some  men  loathe  and  execrate  it  on  the  north  side  of  a 
particular  line,  and  then  transfigure  it  into  all  blessedness  and  beauty 
by  the  magic  of  a  mere  parallel  of  latitude.  This  cheap  and  pop- 
ular method  of  hating  slavery  geographically  may  do  for  an 
Anti-Nebraska  man,  but  it  will  not  do  for  an  anti-slavery  man.  It 
may  accord  with  the  frigid  temper  and  technical  ethics  of  the  mere 
politician,  or  the  doughface,  but  it  will  not  satisfy  the  deep,  fervent, 
uncompromising  spirit  of  the  abolitionist.  Opposition  to  slavery 
as  an  outrage  upon  man  and  a -crime  against  God,  as  an  evil  essen- 
tially infernal  in  its  very  nature, —  this  alone  will  avail  us  in  any 
bond  fide  encounter  with  our  Southern  masters  ;  and  this,  I  regret 
to  say,  has  not  been  the  controlling  element  in  the  late  popular 
demonstrations  in  the  Northern  States. 

To  prove  that  the  Anti-Nebraska  excitement  was  the  product  of 
political  rather  than  moral  causes,  of  transient  influences  rather 
than  deep-rooted  convictions,  I  might  refer  to  a  kindred  fact.  The 
stereotyped  watchword  of  the  people  was,  "  The  restoration  of  the 
Missouri  Compromise."  It  is  true,  that  in  several  States  the  anti- 
slavery  demand  went  beyond  this,  but  this  was  the  effective  rally- 
ing cry  in  marshaling  the  different  wings  of  the  movement  under 
a  common  banner.  It  was  a  deceptive,  and  therefore  a  false,  issue. 
I  certainly  do  not  repine  at  the  victories  that  were  achieved  upon 
it.     I  most  cordially  welcome  whatever  blessings  they  may  bring 


SLAVERY   AND   POLITICS.  107 

in  their  train.  I  rejoice  that  the  administration  has  been  rebuked, 
and  rebuked  with  emphasis  ;  and  that  although  no  intelligent  man 
could  have  believed  the  restoration  of  the  broken  compromise  a 
practicable  thing,  there  was  yet  manifested  an  unmistakable  purpose 
to  brand  with  public  reprobation  the  perfidy  that  had  destroyed  it. 
The  malady  of  the  party  in  power  demanded  the  physic  thus 
administered.  But  the  issue,  I  insist,  was  unworthy  of  the  crisis. 
It  was  an  instrument  on  which  very  different  tunes  could  be  played. 
It  had  a  face  looking  both  North  and  South.  The  policy  of  restor- 
ing the  Compromise,  in  one  of  its  aspects,  was  anti-slavery,  since 
it  would  prevent  the  curse  from  spreading  over  soil  that  was 
free  ;  but  in  others  it  was  incurably  pro-slavery.  To  restore  this 
Compromise  would  be  to  propitiate  the  spirit  of  compromise,  which 
has  been  the  great  curse  of  our  cause.  It  would  be  to  reaffirm 
the  binding  obligation  of  a  compact  that  should  never  have  been 
made,  and  from  which  we  should  seek  the  first  favorable  opportu- 
nity of  deliverance.  It  would  be  to  recognize  the  slave  power  as 
an  equal  and  honorable  contracting  party,  Avaiving  its  violated  faith, 
and  thus  precluding  us  from  pleading  its  perfidy  in  discharge  of  all 
compromises  from  the  beginning.  It  would  be  to  go  back,  by  the 
shortest  and  cheapest  route,  to  the  compromise  measures  of  1850, 
and  the  Baltimore  platforms  of  1852,  instead  of  forward  to  the  plat- 
form of  the  Free  Democracy.  It  would  be  to  degrade  our  cause  to 
the  level  of  those  who  studiously  wash  their  hands  of  all  taint  of 
abolitionism,  and  only  wage  war  against  the  administration  because 
it  broke  up  the  blessed  reign  of  peace  which  descended  upon  the 
country  in  the  year  1850.  Sir,  had  we  in  the  North  been  animated 
by  a  spirit  equal  to  the  crisis,  we  would  have  said  to  our  Southern 
friends,  "  We  do  not  ask  you  to  restore  the  Missouri  Compromise. 
The  breach  you  have  made  is  one  we  do  not  desire  to  heal  in  that 
method,  but  we  are  resolved  to  march  through  it  to  the  fullest  asser- 
tion of  our  constitutional  rights.  We  do  not  mean  to  play  into  your 
hands  under  a  hypocritical  mask,  or  attempt  the  folly  of  firing  a 
double  battery  against  freedom  and  slavery  at  the  same  time,  but  we 
mean  to  avail  ourselves  of  your  treachery  in  building  up  the  very 
cause  you  have  sought  to  destroy.  You  have  trampled  upon  your 
plighted  faith  to  us  that  Kansas  and  Nebraska  shall  be  free,  by  ruth- 
lessly breaking  down  the  wall  which  guarded  them  ;  and  now,  by 
way  of  redressing  the  wrong  you  have  done  us,  and  as  some  atone- 
ment for  it,  we  not  only  demand  that  these  Territories  shall  be  pre- 
served free  by  law,  but  that  all  territory  shall  be  thus  preserved, 
whether  at  present  owned  or  hereafter  to  be  acquired  by  the  govern- 


108  SLAVERY   AND   POLITICS. 

ment ;  that  not  another  slave  State  shall  ever  be  admitted  into 
this  Union,  either  from  Utah,  New  Mexico,  the  State  of  Texas,  or 
elsewhere  ;  that  the  Fugitive  Slave  Act  shall  be  unconditionally  re- 
pealed ;  that  slavery  in  our  national  district  shall  be  abolished  ;  and, 
in  fine,  that  the  curse  shall  be  hurled  back  upon  the  States  which 
it  scourges,  to  live  if  it  can,  or  die  if  it  must,  by  its  own  local  enact- 
ments. You  have  made  manifest  your  purpose  to  nationalize  slav- 
ery in  this  Republic  ;  we  now  proclaim  our  fixed  purpose  to  dena- 
tionalize it.  You  have  broken  a  time-honored  compact,  when  you 
can  no  longer  use  it  to  your  advantage ;  we  now  make  your  breach 
the  exodus  of  our  people  from  the  bondage  of  all  compromises." 

This,  sir,  would  have  been  our  position,  had  we  been  in  earnest. 
The  Nebraska  iniquity  was  only  a  single  link  in  a  great  chain  of 
measures  aiming  at  the  absolute  supremacy  of  slavery  in  this  gov- 
ernment, and  thus  inviting  a  resistance  commensurate  with  that 
policy  ;  and  to  cut  down  the  issue  between  slavery  and  freedom  to 
so  narrow,  equivocal,  and  half-hearted  a  measure,  at  a  time  when 
every  consideration  plead  for  radical  and  thorough  work,  was  prac- 
tical infidelity  to  the  cause  and  the  crisis.  It  was  sporting  with 
humanity,  and  oivino;  to  the  winds  a  glorious  victory  for  the  right 
when  it  was  almost  within  our  grasp.  It  was,  in  fact,  stabbing 
freedom  in  its  vitals,  and  closing  up  an  artery  in  the  slave  power, 
madly  opened  by  its  own  hand,  which  threatened  to  bleed  it  to 
death. 

Mr.  Chairman,  the  view  I  have  been  enforcing  is  confirmed  by 
the  general  course  of  political  action  against  slavery.  I  refer,  more 
particularly,  to  the  party  styling  itself  the  Free  Democracy.  I  cer- 
tainly would  not  speak  of  this  organization  in  any  terms  of  undue 
disparagement.  I  have  myself  been  recognized  as  a  member  of  it, 
and  have  trusted  in  it  as  an  instrumentality  likely  to  accomplish 
great  good  for  the  anti-slavery  cause.  Its  existence  was  a  neces- 
sity, springing  out  of  the  pro-slavery  servility  of  the  old  parties, 
and  it  promised  to  destroy  them,  as  an  indispensable  preliminary  to 
any  effective  help  for  the  slave.  In  this  needed  work  of  destruc- 
tion it  has  been  successful  to  a  very  considerable  extent,  and  so  far 
is  entitled  to  general  gratitude.  It  has  done  excellent  service  in 
forcing  the  slavery  question  into  general  discussion,  and  sending  to 
our  national  legislature  some  noble  representatives  of  its  principles, 
who  have  given  it  an  influence  it  could  not  otherwise  have  exerted. 
The  controlling  purpose  of  the  party  at  its  formation  was  the  divorce 
of  the  Federal  Government  from  slavery,  by  keeping  it  actively 
and  perpetually  on  the  side  of  freedom  ;  and  its  members  pledged 


SLAVERY  AND  POLITICS.  109 

themselves  to  "  fight  on,  and  fight  ever,"  till  a  triumphant  victory 
should  reward  their  exertions.  Young,  vigorous,  and  withal 
claiming  to  be  "  healthy,"  it  went  forth  for  a  season  upon  its  mis- 
sion, striking  terror  into  the  slave  power  and  its  abettors,  kindling 
the  fires  of  agitation,  drawing  to  its  standard  the  better  sort  of 
men  in  the  old  organizations,  and  wanting  only  faith,  patience,  and 
fidelity,  to  insure  it  a  glorious  triumph,  in  the  fullness  of  time  ap- 
pointed by  Providence  for  all  great  moral  achievements. 

But,  sir,  where  now  is  the  Free  Democracy  ?  Is  it  dead,  or  only 
sleeping  ?  Has  its  mission  been  abruptly  terminated,  or  has  it  yet 
a  future  ?  Perhaps  it  still  lives,  but  it  has,  I  know,  received  some 
terrible  shocks  from  the  combined  assaults  of  Anti-Nebraskaism 
and  Know  Nothingism  ;  and  if  a  competent  political  doctor  were 
called  in,  he  would  probably  find  the  patient  in  a  state  of  great 
prostration,  accompanied  by  a  painful  difficulty  of  breathing.  Sir, 
why  is  this?  How  comes  it  to  pass  that  men  who  had  braved  the 
proscription  of  the  old  parties  and  dared  to  stand  for  the  right  for 
six  or  seven  years,  should  so  suddenly  grow  weary,  and  exhibit 
such  eagerness  for  new  associations  ?  Whence  came  the  strange 
infatuation  that  has  invested  fusionism  with  such  charms,  despoiling 
many  of  the  leaders  of  the  Independent  Democracy  of  their  courage 
and  strength,  and  causing  its  rank  and  file  to  skulk  like  cowards 
into  the  dark  camp  of  Know  Nothingism,  and  identify  their  fortunes 
with  the  mongrel  and  invisible  hordes  that  rally  under  its  banner  ? 
And  why  should  the  Free  Democracy  die  with  the  Whig  and  Dem- 
ocratic parties  ?  It  was  delightful,  I  admit,  to  see  the  end  of  these 
organizations  approaching,  after  they  had  so  long  cumbered  the 
ground  and  cursed  the  cause  of  freedom,  and  I  can  readily  pardon 
some  acts  of  indiscretion,  even  some  degree  of  anti-slavery  delir- 
ium, in  the  near  prospect  of  an  event  so  very  prophetic  of  the 
"  good  time  coming."  But  our  singular  misfortune  was,  that  in- 
stead of  borrowing  new  life  from  the  death  of  these  parties,  instead 
of  absorbing  their  vitality  as  it  ebbed  away,  and  thus  appropriat- 
ing it  to  our  own  life,  we  determined  that  our  time  to  die  had 
come  also.  Certainly  !  Why  should  not  Free  Soilers  "  follow  in 
the  footsteps  of  their  illustrious  predecessors  ?  " 

To  say  that  we  would  "  fight  on,  and  fight  ever,"  was  a  mere 
philanthropical  flourish.  Was  not  our  organization  got  up  purely 
to  worry  and  bedevil  the  old  ones  to  death,  and  not  as  a  perma- 
nent movement  designed  to  displace  them  ?  Why  should  we 
struggle  against  the  immense  odds  that  encounter  us,  in  the  vain 
endeavor  to  bring  the  people  up  to   our  high  ground  ?     Why  not 


110  SLAVERY  AND  POLITICS. 

come  clown  from  our  exclnsiveness,  freely  affiliate  with  them,  and 
adapt  our  action  to  their  slower  movement  ?  Why  not  strike  our 
colors,  disband  our  little  army,  go  with  the  multitude,  and  commit 
the  result  to.  Providence  and  the  politicians?  Such  appeared  to 
be  the  logic  of  hundreds  and  thousands  of  Free  Democrats  ;  and 
the  result  is,  the  disruption  and  dispersion  of  the  party  at  a  time 
when  both  principle  and  policy  demand  its  continued  existence.  I 
beg  here  not  to  be  misunderstood.  I  have  never  had  any  idola- 
trous attachment  for  this  party.  I  have  regarded  it  only  as  a 
means ;  and  if  I  have  been  devoted  to  it,  it  was  because  of  my 
devotion  to  the  great  end  which  I  believed  it  fitted  to  accomplish. 
I  have  never  been  so  silly  as  to  look  upon  the  Free  Democracy  as 
a  great  tree,  on  which  all  the  birds  of  the  air  must  come  and  sit,  or 
a  oreat  net,  in  which  all  the  fish  of  the  sea  must  be  caught. 
When  freedom  shall  have  her  final  triumph,  it  will  probably  not 
be  under  any  single  name,  or  in  honor  of  any  exclusive  leadership, 
but  by  such  a  gradual  diffusion  of  anti-slavery  truth  as  shall  at 
length  pervade  the  minds  and  sway  the  hearts  of  the  people  of 
these  States. 

The  spread  of  our  principles  is  the  grand  object ;  and  this,  I 
insist,  can  best  be  done  by  steadily  and  inflexibly  prosecuting  a 
high  aim,  and  trusting  in  the  power  of  an  honest  example  to 
bring  the  people  ultimately  to  our  standard.  When  we  saw,  as 
we  thought,  the  Whig  and  Democratic  parties  passing  away,  and 
proudly  felt  that  these  great  bulwarks  of  slavery,  mainly  through 
our  agency,  were  at  last  about  to  be  overthrown,  we  should  have 
remembered  that  their  disintt  oration  is  one  thing,  and  the  organ- 
ization  of  their  fragments  into  a  new  party,  upon  broad  and  well- 
defined  issues,  is  quite  a  different  thing.  We  should  have  remem- 
bered, in  the  language  of  Whittier,  that  "  The  waster  is  the  builder 
too  ;  "  and  that,  if  the  people  were  not  ready  to  lay  hold  of  our 
fundamental  doctrines,  we  could  not  fuse  with  them,  but  must 
uphold  our  standard  as  the  only  means  of  drawing  them  to  us  or 
toward  us.  We  should  have  maintained  our  ground  and  beck- 
oned the  people  to  come  up  and  possess  it,  instead  of  meanly 
deserting  it  ourselves  for  some  narrow  issue,  and  then  vainly  ex- 
pecting them  to  advance  beyond  it.  Instead  of  dying  as  an  inde- 
pendent organization  we  should  only  have  agreed  to  cease  our 
separate  work  on  condition  of  being  translated  into  a  larger 
movement,  first  committed  to  the  essential  articles  of  our  faith. 
This,  sir,  has  been  the  fatal  error  of  Free  Democrats,  especially 
here  in  the  West.     The  truth  is,  our  party  has  been  tainted  with 


SLAVERY   AND    POLITICS.  Ill 

an  unhealthy  element  from  the  beginning.    Some  rather  suspicious 
characters  officiated  at  its  birth  and  baptism   at  Buffalo,  in  1848. 
We  then  took  into  our  embrace  many  who  were  as  alien  to  our 
principles  as  light  is  to  darkness,  or  as  Native  Americanism  is  to 
anti-slavery.     I  fear  we  were  swayed  then,  as  we  have  sometimes 
been  since,  by  a  measure  of  that  expediency  which  we  had    con- 
demned in  the  old  parties.     We  were  animated  as  much,  perhaps, 
by  a  desire  to  have  the  multitude  go  with  us,  as  by  an  overmaster- 
ing fidelity  to  our  cherished   convictions.     As   a  party,  there  is 
some  reason  to  apprehend  that  we  have  never  been  soundly  con- 
verted.    We   are   too  much  inclined  to  worship  success,  and  Ave 
decidedly  prefer  that  it  should  be  immediate.     We  are  not  ple- 
narily  inspired  with  that  earnest,  all-trusting  faith,  that   becomes 
the  genuine  disciples  of  the  truth,  and  that  even  gathers  strength 
as  the  opposition  to  it  increases.     Our  zeal  too  often   blazes  forth 
by  spasmodic   fits,   without  any  steadfast  fervent   heat  within  to 
sustain  it.     We  easily  grow  disheartened  at  our  numerical  weak- 
ness and  the  forces   arrayed  against  us,  forgetting  that  the  real 
power  of  a  party,  justly  considered,  lies  not  in  the  numbers  it  can 
muster,  but  in  the  truth  it  teaches,  and  the   loyalty  with  which  it 
maintains  it.     In  overlooking  this  fact  we  are  led  into  perpetual 
temptations,  and  blinded  to  the  path  of  duty.     We  are  induced  to 
overrate  the  value  of  present  success,  and  thus  to  achieve  it,  if  we 
can,  by  the  unscrupulous  arts  of  the  politician.     The  martyr  spirit 
dies  out  in  our  ranks,  and  as  we  descend,  step  by  step,  to   the 
level  of  other  parties,  and  apparently  enlist  them  on  our  side,  we 
lose  our  distinctive  character  as  anti-slavery  men  and  with  it  our 
power  to  serve  the  cause,  and  thus  find  our  weakness  in  that  which 
we  foolishly  mistook  for  our  strength.     By  narrowing  the  issue  we 
had  made  with   slavery,  and   incorporating  the   new  principle  of 
hostility  to  Catholics  and  foreigners,  our  movement, -in  the  opinion 
of  some,  has  grown  immensely  in   numerical  power  ;   by  incorpo- 
rating the  kind  redand  equally  orthodox  principle  of  hatred  toward 
negroes,  still  larger  numbers  might   be  enlisted.     But,  in  the  mean 
time,  what  would  be  the  fate  of  the  anti-slavery  enterprise  ?     Sir, 
with  parties,  as  with  individuals,  it  is  character  that  constitutes  real 
strength  ;  and  this  must  often  be  obtained  by  the  sacrifice  of  popu- 
larity and  present  success.     Who  has  not  witnessed  the   power  of 
one  bold,  honest  man,  in  making  an  unpopular   cause  respected, 
and  putting  a  thousand  enemies  to  flight  ? 

Character  is  everything.    It  is  priceless;  and  if  a  man  so  regards 
it,  if  he  is  willing  to  sacrifice  all  temporal  honors  and  advantages, 


112  SLAVERY   AND   POLITICS. 

even  life  itself,  on  the  altar  of  his  fidelity,  he  gives  to  the  world  a 
testimony  that  is  worth  more  to  the  cause  he  espouses  than  any 
temporary  success  could  possibly  be,  achieved  by  a  compromise  of 
his  integrity.  He  shows  forth  an  example  that  will  be  an  ever- 
living  fountain  of  inspiration  and  strength.  The  real  benefactors 
of  our  race  have  not  been  worldly-minded  calculators  who  pru- 
dently adapted  themselves  to  current  opinions  or  practices,  but 
bold  and  independent  spirits  who  braved  every  form  of  peril  and 
suffering  in  upholding  a  lofty  ideal  of  duty.  The  world  bears 
witness  that  they  have  succeeded,  in  the  highest  sense  of  the  term, 
and  that  the  kind  of  influence  men  exert  in  favor  of  a  cause  is  far 
more  important  than  the  quantity  of  it.  Had  the  Free  Democracy 
been  inflexibly  true  to  its  best  ideas,  had  it  maintained  a  position 
of  immovable  firmness,  like  a  rock  in  the  sea  bidding  defiance  to 
winds  and  waves,  what  a  glorious  tribute  it  would  thus  have  offered 
to  the  cause  of  freedom !  I  cannot  pretend  to  say  what  its  num- 
bers would  now  have  been,  but  I  know  that  such  an  example  must 
have  been  contagious,  and  that  our  power,  as  an  independent 
movement,  would  have  been  immensely  augmented.  Instead  of 
a  shattered  organization,  sinking  into  a  common  grave  with  the 
Whig  and  Democratic  parties,  and  dishonored  by  the  meretricious 
embrace  of  Native  Americanism,  we  should  now  have  found  it 
germinating  into  new  life  upon  their  ruins,  knit  together  as  a  unit 
by  the  intensity  of  a  common  zeal  for  freedom,  commanding  its 
own  fortunes  instead  of  committing  them  to  the  keeping  of  its 
foes,  and  thus  holding  in  its  own  hands  the  destiny  of  our  cause. 
At  all  events,  and  more  than  all  else,  it  would  have  stood  before 
the  country  in  the  uprightness  of  a  genuine  manhood,  and  with 
the  resolve  of  a  martyr  to  be  true.  Here,  sir,  has  been  our  weak- 
ness, and  herein  is  seen  how  poorly  we  comprehend  the  dignity  of 
our  cause,  and  how  feebly  we  espouse  it.  We  desire  to  lean  upon 
it,  whilst  pretending  to  give  it  our  support.  We  do  not  ally  our- 
selves to  it  with  a  perfectly  unselfish  devotion,  resolved  to  stand  by 
it.  cost  what  it  may ;  but  our  aim  too  often  is  to  make  it  accommo- 
date some  private  end,  or  to  advance  it  by  methods  that  shall  not 
injuriously  affect  our  worldly  interests.  Think  of  the  early  con- 
fessor of  freedom,  enduring  every  outrage  that  popular  exaspera- 
tion could  invent, — mobbed,  pelted,  hunted  down  as  an  outlaw  or 
a  wild  beast,  and  often  facing  death  itself,  and  yet  showing  forth 
his  faith  in  God  and  in  the  truth  through  these  fiery  trials,  and 
thus  sowing  the  seeds  of  freedom  in  sufferings  and  sacrifices  that 
were  absolutely  necessary  to  its  growth,  —  think  of  such   heroism 


SLAVERY  AND  POLITICS.  113 

as  this,  and  contrast  it  with  the  course  of  the  modern  anti-slavery 
politician,  distrusting  the  power  of  his  own  principles,  intent  upon 
disarming  them  of  their  unpopularity,  perpetually  deferring  to  the 
ruling  influences  of  society  instead  of  bravely  withstanding  them, 
and  even  blindly  abjuring  his  creed  and  enlisting  in  the  ranks  of 
Know  Nothingism,  in  the  hope  of  thereby  hastening  the  millen- 
nium of  freedom  ! 

But  I  leave  these  reflections  and  come  now  to  the  latter  topic. 
I  have  alluded  to  it  incidentally,  but  I  now  propose  to  speak  of 
it  in  direct  terms  ;  and  I  shall  do  so,  more  especially,  on  account 
of  the  unfortunate  deflection  of  the  anti-slavery  sentiment  of  the 
country  which  it  has  occasioned,  and  shall  thus  follow  out  the  line 
of  discussion  already  begun,  by  demonstrating  more  fully  the 
want  of  any  just  comprehension  of  our  movement,  or  any  intense 
hatred  of  the  institution  of  slavery,  among  the  people  of  the  free 
States. 

I  object  to  Know  Nothingism,  in  general  terms,  because,  judged 
by  the  light  of  principle,  it  is  utterly  indefensible.  It  is  radically  vi- 
cious in  spirit.  It  tramples  down  the  doctrine  of  human  brotherhood. 
It  judges  men  by  the  accidents  of  their  condition,  instead  of  striv- 
ing to  find  a  common  lot  for  all,  with  a  common  access  to  the 
blessings  of  life.  It  makes  its  appeal,  not  to  the  reason,  but  to  the 
unenlightened  prejudices  and  misdirected  passions  of  the  people. 
It  excites  our  abhorrence  by  veiling  itself  in  darkness,  in  a  land  in 
which  the  people  are  their  masters  and  discussion  is  free.  It  is  not 
called  for  by  any  real  need  of  the  times.  It  is  at  war  with  justice, 
humanity,  republicanism,  and  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  is, 
when  dragged  to  the  light,  a  bald  and  ghastly  heresy,  wanting  even 
the  thin  covering  of  a  decent  fallacy  to  hide  its  naked  features. 

Considered  more  particularly,  I  oppose  it,  first,  because  of  its 
false  assumption  of  danger  from  the  Romish  Hierarchy.  Accord- 
ing to  the  late  census,  the  Protestant  churches  of  the  United  States 
are  about  thirty*two  times  as  numerous  as  the  Catholic,  and  can 
accommodate  more  than  twenty  times  as  many  worshippers.  The 
proportion  of  adult  Catholics  of  this  country  to  the  whole  popula- 
tion is  only  as  one  to  twenty-eight.  In  the  State  of  Virginia, 
where  the  Order  seems  to  flourish,  the  Catholic  churches  cannot 
accommodate  one  hundredth  part  of  the  number  receiving  accom- 
modations in  the  Protestant  churches.  These,  sir,  are  the  facts  by 
which  this  new-born  scheme  of  bigotry  and  intolerance  must  be 
tried.  This  is  the  monstrous  power  that  is  to  swallow  up  our  lib- 
erties, unless  politicians  and  priests  unite  in  open  and  secret  combi- 


114  SLAVERY  AND   POLITICS. 

nations  to  check  its  aggressions.  Now,  I  ask,  can  any  man  feel 
alarmed  who  will  allow  himself  to  reason  ?  The  Papacy,  like  every 
other  force  in  society,  must  submit  to  those  necessary  conditions  of 
life  which  surround  it.  It  has  seen  fit  to  take  up  its  abode  in  our 
Democratic  Republic,  and,  in  doing  so,  it  has  been  compelled  to 
divest  itself  of  its  most  odious  and  repulsive  pretensions.  It  may 
exert  a  pretty  decided  influence  upon  our  civil  and  ecclesiastical 
polity  ;  but  while  thus  acting,  it  will  be  incessantly  and  most  pow- 
'  erfully  acted  upon,  by  the  spirit  of  free  inquiry,  by  our  republican 
institutions,  by  our  free  schools,  and  by  that  general  and  traditional 
repugnance  which  all  Protestant  denominations  cherish  toward  it. 
Herein  lies  the  great  blunder  of  Native  Americanism.  It  supposes 
Catholicism  to  bean  eccentric  force,  disowning  all  law  but  its  own, 
entirely  cut  off  from  those  conditions  of  time,  place,  and  circum- 
stance, by  which  all  other  institutions  are  modified  and  controlled. 
Sir,  it  is  impossible,  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  that  the  Papal 
power  should  now  be  felt  in  the  United  States  as  it  is  in  Italy  or 
Spain,  or  as  it  was  felt  in  those  countries  ages  ago.  It  must  obey  the 
law  of  its  condition,  and  can  no  more  withstand  the  multiplied  moral 
forces  which  perpetually  beat  against  it  than  the  physical  world 
can  withstand  the  laws  which  make  it  their  slave.  To  suppose  our 
Republic  seriously  imperiled  by  it  is  to  suppose  the  ages  of  dark- 
ness are  about  to  return,  and  that,  after  all,  the  Catholic  faith  is 
destined  to  prevail  over  the  world.  "  Every  school-house  is  a 
barrier  against  it.  Every  printing-press  is  a  battlement.  Every 
steam-car  is  a  battering-ram  to  break  it  in  pieces."  Free  thought, 
its  free  utterance,  a  free  press,  an  open  Bible,  and  a  hearty  trust 
in  the  almightiness  of  truth,  —  these  are  the  only  weapons  needed 
here  in  the  warfare  against  error  ;  and  in  the  hands  of  twenty-five 
millions  of  Protestants  there  is  wanting  even  the  shadoiv  of  a  pre- 
text for  secret  combinations,  or  any  sort  of  extraordinary  measures 
in  defense  of  our  constitutional  rights.  Protestantism,  with  such 
advantages,  can  afford  to  fight  its  battles  in  the  open  daylight  of 
the  world,  and  it  dishonors  itself  when  it  invokes  the  machinery  of 
despotism  in  its  behalf.  It  confesses  itself  unfit  for  its  mission, 
and  thus  strikes  at  its  own  life. 

And  this  brings  me  to  my  second  objection  to  Know  Nothingism. 
Granting  that  our  institutions  are  in  danger  from  the  rapid  growth 
of  Romanism  among  us,  1  oppose  this  new  crusade  against  it  be- 
cause its  method  of  opposition  must  necessarily  aggravate,  instead 
of  mitigate,  the  mischief  sought  to  be  cured.  Secrecy,  indeed  !  Our 
Model   Republic  loving  darkness   rather  than  light !      American 


SLAVERY  AND  POLITICS.  115 

Democracy  carrying  concealed  weapons  !  American  Protestantism 
stealing  the  livery  of  the  Jesuit,  and  at  the  same  time  raising  the 
war-cry  against  Rome  !  The  rights  of  conscience  vindicated  by  a 
great  American  party  which  makes  Catholicism  a  religious  test, 
whilst  its  members  surrender  their  own  private  judgment  and  free- 
dom of  action  to  the  majority  of  the  councils  to  which  they  belong  ! 
Has  it  come  to  this  ?  Was  the  Reformation  a  failure  ?  Were 
John  Milton,  Roger  Williams,  and  William  Penn,  weak-headed 
fanatics  ?  Is  Protestantism  to  be  saved  and  sanctified  by  men  who 
systematically  trample  it  in  the  dust  ?  I  could  not  be  a  Know 
Nothing,  for  the  very  reason  that  I  am  a  Protestant.  With  me, 
Protestantism  is  too  precious,  too  sacred,  to  be  thus  dishonored, 
even  for  its  own  sake.  It  is  our  life-blood  as  a  people,  and  can  only 
be  preserved  pure  by  circulating  freely  and  naturally  through  the 
body  politic.  Our  Native  American  friends,  by  professing  a  peculiar 
zeal  for  it,  and  at  the  same  time  joining  a  secret,  oath-bound  polit- 
ical order  for  the  wholesale  proscription  of  Catholics,  prove  them- 
selves to  be  Jesuits  in  policy.  Were  they  real  Protestants,  they  would 
have  faith  in  Protestantism  as  a  principle  ;  and  they  would  show 
that  faith,  not  by  violating  it,  but  by  trusting  it,  and  standing  by 
it,  in  example  as  well  as  precept,  under  all  temptations.  They 
would  recoil  from  even  the  thought  of  laying  aside  their  legitimate 
weapons,  to  which  Protestantism  is  indebted  for  all  its  genuine 
growth  and  strength,  for  the  sake  of  employing  either  fraud  or 
force  in  maintaining  their  cause.  Their  hatred  of  Jesuitism  would 
make  them  the  last  to  imitate  its  unhallowed  practices.  They 
would  feel  that  the  best  possible  service  of  Protestantism  is  the  tes- 
timony of  a  consistent  example,  and  that  its  worst  foe  is  the  weak- 
ness that  would  build  up  its  power  by  methods  wholly  at  war  with 
its  first  principles.  No  good  cause  has  ever  yet  been  helped  by 
enlisting  the  devil  on  its  side,  because  no  man  has  been  found  wise 
enough  to  tell  how  to  employ  him  without  thereby  fortifying  his 
citadel  instead  of  bombarding  it. 

No,  sir.  If  Protestantism  wishes  to  palsy  the  rampant  spirit  of 
Romanism,  it  must  not  borrow  that  spirit,  nor  adopt  its  tactics. 
The  work  that  should  chiefly  concern  it  is  at  home.  Its  worst 
enemies  are  those  of  its  own  household.  Mr.  Macaulay,  in  his 
masterly  speech  on  the  removal  of  civil  disabilities  from  the  Jews, 
says  truly  :  *"  Christianity  triumphed  over  the  superstitions  of  the 
most  refined  and  of  the  most  savage  nations,  over  the  graceful  my- 
thology of  Greece  and  the  bloody  idolatry  of  the  Northern  Forests. 
It  triumphed  over  the  power  and  policy  of  the  Roman  Empire.   It 


116  SLAVERY  AND  POLITICS. 

tamed  the  barbarians  by  whom  that  empire  was  overthrown.  But 
all  these  victories  were  gained,  not  by  the  help  of  intolerance,  but 
in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  intolerance.  The  whole  history  of 
Christianity  proves  that  she  has  little  indeed  to  fear  from  persecu- 
tion as  a  foe,  but  much  to  fear  from  persecution  as  an  ally." 

This  is  a  truth  which  Know  Nothingism  seems  entirely  to  over- 
look. Let  Protestantism,  in  the  first  place,  understand  itself,  and 
define  its  own  position.  Let  it  digest  its  own  manifold  crudities, 
and  purge  itself  of  the  spirit  of  persecution  which  has  darkened  its 
history  from  the  beginning  and  stayed  its  progress  through  the 
world.  Let  it  exemplify,  in  actual  practice,  its  boasted  dogma  of 
the  sufficiency  of  the  Scriptures  and  the  right  of  private  judgment, 
which  it  never  yet  has  done  as  a  general  rule.  Let  it  spew  out, 
and  cast  from  it  with  loathing,  the  execrable  policy  of  Know  Noth- 
ingism, which  has  assumed  to  act  in  its  name,  and  the  principles  of 
which  would  fairly  justify  the  most  atrocious  forms  of  religious  per- 
secution. Let  it  remember  that  the  proscription  of  Catholics  for 
their  religious  opinions  is  just  as  detestable  as  the  like  proscription 
of  Protestants  ;  and  that  the  only  true  ground  to  stand  on  is  the 
sacred  right  of  every  man  to. enjoy,  without  molestation,  the  faith 
he  prefers.  This  alone,  sir,  will  render  Protestantism  invincible, 
and  at  the  same  time  most  effectually  cripple  the  power  of  Rome. 

And  here,  Mr.  Chairman,  I  am  naturally  brought  to  a  third  and 
kindred  objection  to  Know  Nothingism.  I  do  not  think  well  enough 
of  Protestantism,  in  its  present  guilty  complicity  with  American 
slavery,  to  enter  the  lists  with  it  in  its  newly  organized  warfare 
against  Popery.  I  should  feel  myself  in  strange  compan}\  I  do 
not  know  how  many  slaves  are  held  by  American  Catholics,  but  the 
number  cannot  be  very  great,  judging  from  the  number  of  Catho- 
lics in  the  South.  Of  our  Protestant  denominations,  the  Method- 
ists, North  and  South,  in  the  year  1858,  owned  218,000  ;  the 
Presbyterians,  Old  and  New  School,  80,000  ;  the  Baptists,  125,000  ; 
the  Episcopalians,  80,000  ;  the  Disciples  or  Campbellites,  100,000  ; 
other  denominations,  60,000,  —  making,  in  all,  063,000  slaves  held 
by  the  ministers  and  members  of  the  Protestant  churches  of  this 
country  !  And  the  American  Tract  Society,  the  American  Sun- 
day-school Union,  the  American  Board  of  Foreign  Missions,  and, 
in  short,  all  the  grand  instrumentalities  which  these  churches  em- 
ploy for  the  spread  of  knowledge  and  religion  throughout  the  world 
are  controlled  by  the  Slave  Interest.  In  this  particular  they  seem 
to  fill  the  Know  Nothing  measure,  for  they  are  completely  "  Amer- 
icanized!"    They  expurgate  the  religious  literature  of  the  country, 


SLAVERY   AND   POLITICS.  117 

with  a  studious  reference  to'the  feelings  of  the  slaveholder.  They 
even  plunder  and  defile  the  school-books  of  our  youth  in  order  to 
propitiate  their  Southern  membership.  They  prefer  denomina- 
tional sway  to  the  propagation  of  a  pure  faith.  The  most  popular 
and  influential  clergymen  of  these  churches  united  with  Castle 
Garden  patriots  in  1850  in  "saving  the  Union,"  and  inundating 
the  land  with  lower-law  sermons.  These  religious  bodies  may  have 
made  some  progress  during  the  past  few  years,  but  they  are  essen- 
tially on  the  side  of  the  oppressor  to-day.  They  are  the  right  arm 
of  the  slave  power.  In  the  language  of  Albert  Barnes,  so  often 
quoted,  "  There  is  no  power  out  of  the  American  Church  that  could 
sustain  slavery  an  hour,  if  it  were  not  sustained  in  it !  " 

Mr.  Chairman,  if  Christianity  teaches  the  brotherhood  of  all 
men,  and  the  breaking  of  every  yoke,  what  sort  of  a  God  do  these 
churches  worship,  and  what  sort  of  a  religion  inspires  them  ?  How 
much  better,  in  the  light  of  these  facts,  is  our  boasted  Protestant- 
ism, than  the  Romanism  we  are  so  eager  to  destroy  ?  How  much 
worse  is  the  Catholic  priest  of  our  country,  or  even  the  Pope  him- 
self, than  our  Protestant  clergyman  who  could  send  his  own  mother 
or  brother  into  slavery,  in  testimony  of  his  allegiance  to  the  lower 
law,  or  write  such  a  book  as  "  The  South  Side  View  of  American 
Slavery  ?  "  And  how  is  it,  sir,  that  the  zeal  of  our  Northern 
Know  Nothings  waxes  so  strong  against  "  Babvlonian  abomina- 
tions,"  whilst  here  we  have  a  Native  American  Babylon,  upheld 
by  our  Protestant  sects,  whose  infernal  sway  over  three  millions 
and  a  half  of  human  beings  for  whom  Christ  died  makes  the  cor- 
ruptions  of  Rome  dwindle  into  insignificance,  whilst  it  strengthens 
the  arm  of  despotism,  and  stifles  the  voice  of  freedom,  throughout 
the  world  ? 

Sir,  I  submit  that  our  Protestantism  should  perform  a  lustration, 
to  purify  itself  from  this  transcendent  wickedness,  before  it  at- 
tempts any  new  assault  upon  an  outward  foe.  It  should  be 
ashamed  to  raise  the  alarm  at  the  spread  of  Popery  and  false  doc- 
trine, whilst  it  outrages  Heaven  by  its  impious  denial  of  the  first 
lesson  of  Christianity.  It  should  slacken  its  zeal  in  building  up  its 
power  until  it  ceases  to  fill  the  ranks  of  infidelity,  and  turn  relig- 
ion itself  into  scorn,  by  its  revolting  espousal  of  "  the  vilest  system 
of  oppression  that  ever  saw  the  sun."  It  should  not  strain  at  the 
gnat  of  American  Catholicism,  whilst  it  swallows  down  at  one 
gulp  the  huge  camel  of  American  slavery.  In  a  word,  it  should 
speedily  enter  upon  the  work  of  a  thorough  repentance,  by  faith- 
fully applying  its  own  professed  principles  in  the  cure  of  its  own 


118  SLAVERY    AND   POLITICS. 

sins  ;  and  its  example,  as  I  have  already  insisted,  will  exert  an 
influence  far  more  potent  in  checking  the  power  of  Jesuitism  than 
any  organized  secret  machinery  can  possibly  wield. 

In  the  next  place,  I  oppose  this  new  Order  on  account  of  its  pro- 
scription of  foreigners.  The  whole  number  of  these  now  in  the 
United  States  is  only  about  2,000,000  ;  and  the  whole  number  of 
foreigners  and  their  descendants,  from  the  year  1790  to  1850,  is 
only  about  4,000,000.  The  entire  foreign  vote  of  1850  was  only 
270,430.  This  political  and  social  element  among  us,  so  alarming 
to  many,  is  mingled  with  our  native  population,  now  numbering 
say  25,000,000,  and  spreading  over  a  territory  reaching  from  the 
Atlantic  to  the  Pacific.  Experience  has  shown  that  wTe  need  the 
help  of  our  immigrants  in  developing  the  physical  resources  of  the 
country,  and  building  up  the  interests  of  freedom  and  free  labor, 
whilst  they  need  the  opportunity  we  tender  them  of  becoming 
owners  of  the  soil  and  valuable  citizens  of  the  Republic,  instead 
of  the  starving  vassals  of  foreign  despots.  Let  them  come. 
Trodden  down  by  kingly  power,  and  hungering  and  thirsting  after 
the  righteousness  of  our  free  institutions,  let  them  have  a  welcome 
on  these  shores.  Their  motive  is  a  very  natural  and  at  the  same 
time  an  honorable  one,  —  that  of  bettering  their  lot.  They  prefer 
our  country  and  its  government  to  every  other,  however  poorly 
enlightened  that  preference  may  be.  "  The  foreigner,"  says  Ger- 
rit  Smith,  "  has  given  one  great  proof  of  possessing  an  American 
heart  which  our  native  could  not  give  ;  for  whilst  our  native 
became  an  American  by  the  accident  of  birth,  the  emigrant  became 
one  by  choice  ;  whilst  our  native  may  be  an  American,  not  from 
any  preference  for  America,  the  emigrant  has  proved  that  he  pre- 
fers our  country  to  every  other."  To  proscribe  him  on  account  of 
his  birthplace  is  as  mean  and  cowardly  as  to  proscribe  him  for  his 
religious  faith  or  the  color  of  his  skin.  It  is  the  rankest  injustice, 
the  most  downright  inhumanity,  and  can  only  be  defended  by  the 
most  driveling  sophistry.  The  celebrated  Dr.  Lieber,  in  a  late 
letter,  commenting  on  the  fallacy  that  adopted  citizens  are  less 
American  in  feeling  than  our  natives,  uses  this  language  :  — 

"  Among  the  most  eminent  or  most  widely  useful  American  divines,  there 
have  always  been,  and  are  to  this  day,  many  born  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic.  The  same  will  be  found  to  be  the  case,  if  you  examine  the  list  of 
great  advocates  and  of  American  statesmen  throughout  the  land.  The  same 
is  true  of  teachers,  authors,  philosophers,  of  physicians,  of  editors  and  artists, 
merchants,  artisans,  and  farmers,  of  navigators  and  architects,  of  manufacturers 
and  inventors." 


SLAVERY  AND   POLITICS.  119 

He  insists  that  throughout  all  history,  ancient  and  modern,  we 
will  find  among  the  most  devoted  and  patriotic  citizens  names  of 
foreign  birth.     Hear  him  adduce  his  facts  :  — 

"  Has  any  mind  shed  greater  lustre  on  illustrious  Athens  than  Aristotle  ? 
Aristotle  was  a  foreigner,  and  came  to  Attica  when  seventeen  years  old.  Has 
there  been  any  Spaniard  more  Spanish  than  Columbus  ?  Columbus  was  a 
Genoese.  Has  there  been  a  Frenchman  more  French  than  Napoleon,  and 
Cuvier,  and  Constant?  Napoleon  was  an  Italian  ;  Cuvier,  by  birth  and  edu- 
cation, a  German ;  Constant  a  Swiss.  Who  carried  the  Netherlanders  through 
the  direst  war  of  Independence  on  record,  and  who  founded  the  Republic  of 
the  Netherlands  ?  William  of  Orange,  a  Gei'man.  Has  England  ever  had  a 
more  English  king  than  William  III.,  the  Netherlander  ?  Has  Germany  ever 
had  a  more  German  leader  than  Eugene  of  Savoy?  Who  was  Catharine  of 
Russia,  that  made  her  the  great  Power  ?  She  was  a  German  woman.  Has 
Oxford  ever  had  a  greater  professor  than  Erasmus,  of  Rotterdam  ?  The  very 
country  in  which  the  Know  Nothings  now  revile  the  foreigner  was  discovered 
by  Cabot,  a  Genoese,  in  the  service  of  England.  The  proto-martyr  of  the 
American  Revolution  was  Montgomery,  an  Irishman  ;  so  was  Barry,  called  the 
father  of  the  American  navy  ;  and  Paul  Jones,  the  bold  and  early  captain,  was 
a  Scot.  Were  De  Kalb,  Lafayette,  Hamilton,  Gallatin,  no  Americans  ?  Mark 
the  list  of  signers,  and  see  how  many  were  '  foreigners.'  The  hue  and  cry 
against  foreigners  belongs  to  Pagan  antiquity,  when  one  word  served  for  for- 
eigner and  enemy ;  but  not  to  Christianity.  The  very  word  Christianity 
rebukes  Know  Nothingism." 

Sir,  the  creed  that  tries  men  by  the  latitude  and  longitude  of 
their  birthplace,  instead  of  their  character,  and  honors  or  degrades 
them  accordingly,  is  not  only  Pagan,  but  monstrous.  It  insults 
common  sense,  and  confounds  all  distinction  between  right  and 
wrong.  The  Divine  Founder  of  our  religion  teaches  that  God  is 
no  respecter  of  persons ;  that  nationalities  are  of  small  account ; 
that  all  men  are  brethren ;  that  the  accidents  of  humanity  are 
nothing,  and  Man  is  everything.  Native  Americanism  discards  all 
this  as  the  foolishness  of  preaching ;  and  whilst  it  clutches  its  cold- 
blooded dogmas,  and  stabs  Christianity  to  the  heart,  whines  sanc- 
timoniously over  the  growth  of  the  Papal  power  !  And,  stranger 
than  all  else,  thousands  of  anti-slavery  men,  who  have  for  long 
years  plead  for  the  elevation  of  the  African  on  the  ground  of  a 
Christian  brotherhood  of  all,  are  now  fighting  under  this  Infidel 
banner,  and  thus  aiding  a  movement  which  completely  justifies  the 
enslavement  of  the  negro  and  every  other  form  of  despotic  rule. 
Do  they  not  see  that  they  are  murdering  the  cause  of  freedom  by 
such  conduct  ?  Can  an  Abolitionist  embark  in  such  an  enterprise 
without  flatly  contradicting  the  very  first  principles  of  his  faith? 
Can  any  man  justify  it  ?     Is  the  foreigner  to  blame  for  having' 


120  SLAVERY  AND  POLITICS. 

been  born  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  or  the  native  to  be 
praised  for  having  been  born  on  this  ?  Not  having  been  consulted 
on  the  subject  beforehand,  is  it  not  a  shameless  mockery  of  jus- 
tice and  decency  to  deal  with  him  according  to  any  such  test  ? 
You  might  as  well  disfranchise  the  emigrant  for  the  size  of  his 
head,  the  length  of  his  arm,  the  virtues  or  vices  of  his  neighbors, 
or  the  height  of  our  mountains.  You  might  as  well  openly  repu- 
diate the  New  Testament,  and  institute  a  new  code,  requiring  . 
every  man,  upon  the  pains  and  penalties  of  the  Order,  to  be  born 
in  America,  and  describing  the  general  judgment  as  a  grand 
inquest  for  determining  who  shall  be  admitted  into  the  kingdom, 
and  who  rejected,  on  Native  American  principles.  For  if  the  for- 
eigner is  unfit  for  good  society  here,  can  he  be  suffered  to  enjoy  it 
in  the  world  to  come  ?  And  could  he  enjoy  Paradise  in  the  com- 
panionship of  Know  Nothings  ?  Would  not  heaven  itself  be  turned 
upside  down,  if  the  Order  should  have  its  way  ? 

Mr.  Chairman,  there  need  be  no  sort  of  difficulty  in  solving 
this  problem  of  foreignism,  if  we  are  willing  to  deal  justly.  "  Emi- 
grants and  exiles  from  the  Old  World,"  using  the  language  of  the 
Pittsburg  Platform,  "  should  find  a  cordial  welcome  to  homes  of 
comfort  and  fields  of  enterprise  in  the  New  ;  and  every  attempt  to 
abridge  their  privilege  of  becoming  citizens  and  owners  of  the  soil 
among  us,  ought  to  be  resisted  with  inflexible  determination." 
They  have  the  same  right  to  come  here  as  had  our  forefathers. 
When  they  have  cast  in  their  lot  with  us,  let  them  be  treated  as 
Americans.  If  they  violate  the  laws,  let  them  be  punished.  If 
they  demean  themselves  as  good  citizens,  let  them  be  recognized 
as  such.  Let  the  heathen  spirit  of  Caste  be  exorcised,  in  our  deal- 
ings with  them  as  well  as  the  negro.  If  they  give  themselves  up 
to  intemperance,  unthriftiness,  and  a  life  of  mere  animalism,  let  us 
strive  to  enlighten  and  elevate  them,  as  we  would  our  own  people 
under  like  circumstances.  If,  under  the  lead  of  foreign  ruffians  or 
Jesuits  they  become  clannish,  and  inclined  to  take  sides  against  us, 
let  every  good  citizen  rebuke  them.  If  our  native  demagogues 
and  pot-house  politicians  pander  to  their  ignorance,  for  selfish  ends, 
let  us  apply  the  lash  to  their  bare  backs,  instead  of  making  the 
deluded  foreigner  the  vicarious  victim  of  a  chastisement  he  does 
not  deserve.  In  short,  let  the  alien  races  among  us  be  treated 
according  to  their  deserts,  in  the  light  of  their  numbers,  intel- 
ligence, and  character.  Under  such  a  policy,  demagogues  and 
their  tools  would  soon  find  their  true  level.  Notwithstanding 
minor  diversities,  we  should  become,  in   spirit,  one   people.     The 


SLAVERY   AND   POLITICS.  121 

solvent  power  of  American  ideas  would  melt  and  fuse  the  different 
nationalities  into  one  common  mass,  —  thus  averting  the  calamity 
of  a  furious  and  unending  war  of  races,  by  converting  into  friends 
and  brethren  those  whom  Native  Americanism  would  make  per- 
petual aliens  and  fireside  foes  in  our  midst. 

Sir,  it  is  thus  manifest,  that  justice  to  the  foreigner,  and  our  own 
true  policy  as  a  nation,  are  in  harmony.  We  find  our  duty  and 
advantage  going  hand  in  hand.  I  have  already  said  that  our  emi- 
grants are  needed  here  to  build  up  the  cause  of  free  labor.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  shown  by  the  census  returns,  the  growth  of  the 
foreign  element  among  us  has  kept  pace  with  that  of  the  Slave 
Power,  and  thus  prevented  that  more  complete  supremacy  over  us 
which  otherwise  would  have  been  secured.  It  is  sometimes  said, 
I  know,  that  our  foreign  vote  is  uniformly  thrown  on  the  side  of 
the  pro-slavery  Democracy  ;  but  I  answer  that,  in  this  respect,  our 
adopted  citizens  are  in  the  company  of  a  very  large  division  of  our 
native  population,  including  many  enlightened  and  good  men.  I 
answer,  further,  that  voting  with  the  pro-slavery  Democracy  is  not 
much  worse  than  voting  with  the  pro-slavery  Whiggery,  which  has 
likewise  been  willing  to  receive  foreign  aid  and  comfort.  I  would 
not  disfranchise  men  in  either  case,  however  wrong  I  might  regard 
their  action. 

It  is  further  insisted  that  our  emigrants  are  intensely  hostile  to 
the  cause  of  freedom,  and  the  most  inveterate  haters  of  the  negro. 
This,  at  best,  can  only  be  partially  true.  It  is  refuted  by  their 
choice  of  the  free  States  as  their  home,  and  by  the  known  opposi- 
tion of  the  South  to  their  migration  to  our  shores.  It  is  contra- 
dieted  by  other  facts.  The  States  that  have  been  most  anti- 
slavery,  as  Massachusetts,  New  York,  Ohio,  and  Wisconsin,  give 
the  largest  foreign  vote  ;  whilst  those  which  have  been  most  pro- 
slavery,  as  New  Hampshire,  Connecticut,  New  Jersey,  Iowa,  and 
Indiana,  give  the  smallest  foreign  vote.  These  facts  are  signifi- 
cant. They  account  for  the  prevalence  of  Know  Nothingism  in 
the  South,  where  the  proportion  of  foreigners  to  the  native  white 
population  is  only  as  two  to  one  hundred,  and  prove  the  move- 
ment to  be,  in  fact,  a  crusade  against  the  growth  of  free  principles 
in  the  Northern  States :  for  the  meagre  force  of  foreignism  in  the 
South  can  obviously  occasion  no  local  mischief.  That  anti-slavery 
men,  therefore,  should  actively  oppose  the  settlement  of  foreigners 
among  us,  or  even  throw  the  slightest  obstacles  in  the  way  of  it, 
seems  to  me  perfectly  unaccountable.  But  were  it  granted  that 
all  the  emigrants  landing  on  our  shores  are  pro-slavery,  it  would 


122  SLAVERY   AND   POLITICS. 

not  warrant  the  policy  of  proscription  against  them.  If  so,  a  very 
large  proportion  of  our  natives  would  fall  within  its  mischief,  in- 
cluding very  many  whose  hypocrisy  in  urging  this  objection  is 
beyond  dispute.     This  nation  is  most  undeniably  pro-slavery. 

Similar  reasoning  applies  to  the  argument  often  urged,  that  our 
emigrants  are  unfit  to  exercise  the  privileges  of  citizenship.  That 
this  is  true  of  many  of  them,  I  do  not  deny ;  but  it  is  likewise  true 
of  many  of  our  natives.  Foreigners  are  not  the  only  men  among 
us  who  get  drunk  ;  they  are  not  the  only  men  who  profane  the 
Sabbath  and  God's  name  ;  they  are  not  the  only  ruffians  and  vaga- 
bonds ;  they  are  not  the  only  pugilists  and  mobocrats  ;  they  are  not 
the  only  men  who  can  neither  read  nor  write;  they  are  not  the 
only  men  whom  demagogues  can  dupe.  In  all  that  constitutes 
thorough  viciousness,  corruption,  brutality,  and  the  most  stupid  in- 
competency, multitudes  of  our  much-lauded  native  Americans  can 
cope  tolerably  well  with  our  adopted  citizens.  It  seems  to  me  that 
a  real  patriot  should  have  far  less  desire  to  see  America  ruled  by 
Americans,  than  to  see  Americans  themselves  improved  in  charac- 
ter, loving  justice,  thoroughly  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  freedom, 
sternly  demanding  all  rights  for  all,  rigidly  squaring  our  democratic 
theory  of  equality,  both  in  our  foreign  and  domestic  policy,  by  the 
precepts  of  Christianity,  and  thus  making  themselves  an  example 
and  a  power  on  the  earth.  This  would  be  an  object  worthy  of  the 
purest  ambition.  Without  these  qualifications,  the  demand,  "  Let 
America  be  ruled  by  Americans,"  is  the  meanest  of  twaddle.  It  is 
tantamount  to  saying,  "Let  America  be  ruled  by  slaveholders  and 
doughfaces  ;  let  our  government  continue  to  espouse  the  cause  of 
despotism,  at  home  and  abroad  ;  let  it  trample  upon  justice  and 
humanity  ;  let  it  scoff  at  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and 
verge  farther  and  farther  from  the  landmarks  of  our  fathers ;  let 
mere  nationality,  not  character,  be  the  touchstone  of  merit."  Sir, 
if  any  class  is  to  be  disfranchised,  the  rule  ought  to  be,  "  Let 
America  be  governed  by  the  intelligent  and  the  virtuous  ;  "  for,  on 
principle,  the  vicious  and  ignorant  foreigner  should  fare  precisely 
as  well  as  the  vicious  and  ignorant  native. 

Lastly,  I  wage  war  against  Know  Nothingism,  because  it  ignores 
the  slavery  issue,  and  thus  becomes  the  practical  foe  of  the  anti- 
slavery  cause.  Nothing  could  have  been  more  wisely  planned  or 
more  opportunely  concocted  by  the  slaveholders  and  their  allies. 
Having  sown  the  wind,  in  the  passage  of  the  Nebraska  Bill,  some- 
thing must  be  done  to  avoid  reaping  the  whirlwind.  They  saw  the 
Northern  sky  darkened  by  omens  of  a  coming  tempest,  and  some- 
thing must  be  done  to  break  its  surges.     The    people  could  no 


SLAVERY   AND   POLITICS.  123 

longer  be  humbugged  about  banks  and  tariffs  ;  the  old  party  lines 
were  fadling,  and  tempting  the  people  to  escape  from  their  polit- 
ical keepers ;  and  the  great  crisis  between  slavery  and  freedom 
was  rapidly  and  unmistakably  approaching.  All  eyes  were  turning 
to  the  struggle  which  at  last  seemed  inevitable.  Sir,  does  any- 
body, familiar  with  the  tactics  of  the  slaveholder,  believe  that  the 
birth  of  the  Know  Nothing  Order,  just  at  this  crisis,  was  an  acci- 
dent ?  There  is  both  internal  and  external  evidence  that  it  was  a 
design.  If  the  Protestant  jealousy  of  our  people,  ever  ready  to 
take  fire,  could  be  kindled  against  the  Pope,  it  would  divert  their 
minds  from  the  slaveholder.  If  they  could  be  enlisted  in  a  crusade 
against  foreigners,  it  would  have  the  same  happy  result.  It  mat- 
tered not  that  these  were  miserable  bugbears,  and  would  ultimately 
be  seen  as  such,  if  they  could  only  be  temporarily  used  in  distract- 
ing the  people  and  complicating  the  slavery  question.  This  was 
the  policy,  and,  under  Southern  management,  it  has,  as  might  have 
been  expected,  worked  like  a  charm.  It  has  caused  the  threatened 
anti-slavery  storm  to  pass  off  comparatively  harmless.  It  has  balked 
and  diverted  the  indignation  aroused  by  the  Nebraska  perfidy, 
which  else  would  have  spent  its  force  upon  the  slave  power.  It 
has  draped  over  a  high-handed  villainy,  which  might  have  been  a 
godsend  in  our  hands,  "  a  fetch  upon  Divine  Providence  "  in  has- 
tening the  freedom  of  the  slave.  It  has  succeeded,  as  usual,  by 
dividing  the  people  of  the  free  States  upon  trifles  and  side-issues, 
whilst  the  South  has  been  a  unit  in  defense  of  its  great  interest. 
It  has  disbanded  the  Free  Democratic  Party,  which  has  been  a 
thorn  in  the  side  of  pro-slavery  politicians  since  its  organization, 
bringing  reproach  upon  the  anti-slavery  cause,  and  divisions  in  the 
ranks  of  its  friends.  Multitudes,  hitherto  disowning  all  minor 
issues  as  so  many  stumbling-blocks  in  the  way  of  progress,  and 
keeping  an  eye  single  to  the  great  question  of  the  day,  have  been 
enticed  into  the  Order,  and,  in  the  vain  endeavor  to  harmonize 
Native  Americanism  and  anti-slavery,  have  completely  subordinated 
the  latter.  By  thus  uniting  with  a  National  Party  which  proposed 
no  policy  whatever  in  relation  to  slavery,  they  have  declared  their 
separate- party  action  to  have  been  a  blunder  from  the  beginning. 
They  have  fallen  back  upon  the  vain  experiment  of  serving  two 
masters,  and  the  vicious  morality  of  doing  evil  that  good  may  come. 
They  have  broken  the  moral  power  of  their  movement  by  espous- 
ing principles  glaringly  inconsistent  with  its  fundamental  ideas. 

I  do  not  wish  to  question  the  motives  of  any  honest  man.  I  do 
not  deny  that  many  friends  of  our  cause  may  have  united  with 
Know  Nothingism,  in  the  hope  of  thus  more  effectually  aiding  the 


124  SLAVERY  AND  POLITICS. 

slave.  This  does  not  cure  the  evil  resulting  from  a  false  course.- 
We  have  recently  learned  through  the  public  prints  of  a  pious  at- 
tempt to  serve  the  interests  of  country  Sunday-schools  by  robbing 
a  widow  and  her  helpless  children.  The  cause  of  freedom  is  dis- 
honored by  serving  it  on  like  principles.  We  smite  it  to  the  earth, 
instead  of  arming  it  with  power.  This  is  a  moral  necessity,  and 
it  need  not  surprise  us,  therefore,  to  find  the  ravages  of  Know 
Nothingism  becoming  quite  visible  throughout  the  North.  That  it 
has  done  much  mischief  to  the  cause  of  freedom  in  Ohio  I  think 
will  not  be  denied.  It  has  laid  it  prostrate  in  Indiana.  The 
editor  of  its  leading  organ,  having  determined  last  year  that  Amer- 
ica must  be  ruled  by  Americans,  and  that  the  slavery  question  was 
no  longer  worthy  of  any  special  attention,  sold  his  subscription  list 
to  a  Whig  establishment  for  a  "job-office,"  and  summarily  discon- 
tinued his  paper.  The  Order  having  ignored  the  question  of  slav- 
ery, our  friends  who  joined  it  were  ignored  likewise,  to  which  they 
meekly  submitted.  In  the  Anti-Nebraska  campaign  of  last  year> 
swayed  by  an  impelling  desire  for  fusion,  they  were  generally  will- 
ing to  accept  a  position  of  entire  subordination,  and  even  of  silence, 
under  the  captains  who  commanded  them,  lest  the  pro-slavery  prej- 
udices of  the  people  should  be  aroused  and  their  otherwise  hopeful 
anti-slavery  progress  hindered  !  In  many  localities  our  cause  was 
so  complicated  with  county  offices  and  peculiar  local  arrangements 
that  it  was  not  thought  wise  for  an  anti-slavery  man  to  officiate  in 
its  service,  and  consequently  it  was  handed  over  to  the  tender  mer- 
cies of  its  foes.  As  a  part  of  this  policy,  the  public  repudiation  of 
our  principles  by  the  Anti-Nebraska  party  was  submitted  to,  and, 
one  backward  step  having  prepared  the  way  for  another,  the  finale 
of  the  matter  is,  that  while  the  people  have  not  been  converted 
to  our  doctrines  we  ourselves  are  paralyzed  and  dumb  —  many 
secretly  sighing  to  escape  from  their  unfortunate  environment,  but 
unable  to  see  the  way  of  deliverance.  And  the  same  perni- 
cious results,  though  perhaps  in  a  less  degree,  will  be  seen  in  due 
season  wherever  the  Order  has  seduced  men  into  its  embrace. 
Time  will  test  the  truth  of  what  I  say,  and  prove,  I  doubt  not, 
that  years  of  arduous  and  discouraging  labor  will  be  needed  to 
recover  the  strength  we  have  lost,  and  the  advantage  we  have  fool- 
ishly thrown  away,  by  our  ill-fated  connection  with  a  movement 
which  demanded  our  unhesitating  frowns  from  the  beginning. 

And  now,  sir,  in  conclusion,  what  is  to  be  done  ?  What  is  the 
demand  and  what  the  hope  of  the  hour  ?  How  shall  we  make  the 
anti-slavery  cause  more  thoroughly  understood,  and  the  woes  of 
slavery  more  deeply  felt  by  the  people  ?     I  have  already  indicated 


SLAVERY  AND  POLITICS.  125 

my  answer.  Let  the  true  friends  of  our  movement  find  each  other 
out,  and  stand  together  as  one  man.  Let  our  friends  who  have 
been  led  in  an  evil  hour  to  affiliate  with  Know  Nothingism  imme- 
diately retrace  their  steps,  and  oppose  it  just  as  they  oppose  slavery 
itself.  Let  those  who  have  remained  outside  of  the  Order  continue 
their  warfare  against  it.  Let  it  be  distinctly  understood  that  an 
anti-slavery  man  is,  of  necessity,  the  enemy  of  caste,  bigotry,  and 
proscription.  Let  the  brotherhood  of  all  men,  without  regard  to 
race,  color,  religion,  or  birthplace,  be  the  platform  on  which  all  may 
gather  ;  and  let  us  speedily  organize  our  forces  for  a  genuine  con- 
test with  our  foe.  Let  us  thus  determine  how  little,  as  well  as  how 
much,  was  achieved  for  the  slave  in  the  late  elections ;  what  was 
done  for  the  cause  by  honest  and  hard  fighting,  and  what  was  done 
against  it  by  the  arts  of  mere  diplomacy,  in  temporarily  uniting 
opposite  and  irreconcilable  elements  in  an  empty  and  deceptive 
triumph.  Let  us  be  steadfast  in  our  work,  endeavoring  to  impart 
something  of  permanence  to  the  organization  we  may  adopt,  as 
necessary  to  success,  and  thus  shunning  that  instability  that  would 
form  a  new  party,  with  a  new  name,  for  every  campaign,  and  thus 
fritter  away  our  strength  in  the  fickleness  of  our  schemes,  instead 
of  husbanding  it  for  effective  service.  Let  us  not  be  troubled  about 
the  smallness  of  our  numbers,  but  solicitous  only  for  the  honor  of 
our  cause,  as  the  sure  means  of  its  triumph,  firmly  trusting  that, 
through  our  fidelity,  the  right  result  will  come.  Let  us  not  strive 
after  any  personal  ends  or  transient  success,  but  so  act,  in  reference 
to  this  great  cause,  that  the  calm  and  final  judgment  of  future 
times  shall  be  awarded  in  our  favor.  "  The  passions  which  inflame 
us,"  says  a  great  writer,  "  the  sophistries  which  delude  us,  will  not 
last  forever.  The  paroxysms  of  faction  have  their  appointed  sea- 
son ;  even  the  madness  of  fanaticism  is  but  for  a  day.  The  time 
is  coming  when  our  conflicts  will  be  to  others  what  the  conflicts  of 
our  fathers  are  to  us  ;  when  our  priests  who  convulse  the  State, 
and  our  politicians  who  make  a  stalking-horse  of  the  Church,  will 
be  no  more  than  the  Harleys  and  Sacheverells  of  a  by-gone  day." 
Sir,  if  we  are  animated  by  such  a  spirit  as  this,  Ave  shall  not  doubt 
that  God  will  smile  upon  our  labors,  and  hand  us  down  to  our 
graves  in  peace ;  but  we  shall  be  sustained  by  an  assured  faith,  at 
every  step  of  our  progress,  whatever  may  for  the  time  betide  us 
or  our  cause,  that  — 

"  Truth  shall  triumph  at  the  last, 

For  round  aud  round  we  run  , 
And  ever  the  Right  comes  uppermost, 

And  ever  is  justice  done." 


INDIANA  POLITICS. 

DELIVERED  AT   EAYSVILLE,  JULY  4,  1857. 

[This  picture  of  Indiana  Politics,  carefully  drawn  during  the  political  lull  which 
followed  the  campaign  of  1856,  and  now  reproduced,  will  interest  many  who  were 
lookers-on  or  active  participants  in  the  strifes  of  the  period  reviewed.  While  the 
interest  in  the  political  movements  here  criticised  is  mainl}-  local,  the  moral  which 
they  teach  has  a  general  value,  which  the  student  of  politics  will  scarcely  fail  to  ap- 
preciate.] 

I  am  not  here  to-day,  my  friends,  for  the  purpose  of  entertaining 
you  with  an  old-fashioned  Fourth  of  July  address.  This  would 
be  as  unprofitable  to  you  as  it  would  be  unsuited  to  my  own  tastes. 
I  propose  to  speak  of  those  practical  questions  and  present  duties 
which  most  deeply  concern  each  one  of  us,  and  which  the  existing 
state  of  our  country  naturally  suggests.  I  shall  speak  only  for 
myself,  and  with  the  most  unreserved  freedom  ;  and  I  must  do  this, 
especially,  in  dealing  with  our  latter-day  Indiana  Politics.  I  shall 
refer  particularly  to  the  policy  pursued  here  by  the  opposition 
to  the  party  in  power  during  the  past  three  years ;  for  whoever 
would  understand  the  true  features  of  our  politics  at  this  time,  in 
their  various  complications,  and  thence  determine  the  path  of  duty 
for  the  future,  must  revert  to  the  new  dispensation  ushered  in  by 
the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Restriction,  and  trace  the  progress  of 
events  to  the  point  that  has  at  last  been  reached.  This  margin  of 
time  affords  a  fruitful  text  for  profitable  discussion.  It  covers  a 
sort  of  revolutionary  or  transitional  period,  —  a  season  of  hopeful 
chaos,  promising  new  and  higher  political  creations  if  wise  coun- 
sels had  prevailed,  and  furnishing,  at  all  events,  valuable  lessons 
for  our  guidance.  There  is  a  sense,  I  know,  in  which  it  is  well 
to  let  by-gones  be  by-gones,  and  the  dead  past  bury  its  dead,  but 
Ave  can  never  afford  to  dispense  with  the  lessons  of  experience. 
In  politics,  as  in  morals,  to-day  is  the  child  of  yesterday  and  the 
parent  of  to-morrow.  The  past  and  the  present  form  the  warp 
and  woof  of  one  fabric,  nor  is  it  possible  to  sever  the  cord  that 
unites  them,  and  thus  links  them  to  the  future.  Men  might  as 
reasonably  attempt  to  run  away  from  their  own  shadows,  or  to 
dissolve  the  relation  between  cause   and  effect,  as  to   escape  the 


INDIANA  POLITICS.  127 

inevitable  consequences  of  their  deeds.  It  is  true  philosophy 
therefore  to  provide  for  the  future  by  doing  the  duty  of  the  pres- 
ent, guided  by  the  teachings  of  the  past,  —  profiting  by  mistakes  to 
the  extent  of  shunning  their  repetition,  and  causing  the  past  to 
re-appear  where  its  deeds  have  proved  worthy. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  year  1854  the  Democratic  party  of  the 
Union  was  largely  in  the  ascendant.  As  regards  the  administrative 
policy  of  the  government  it  had  achieved  a  signal  triumph  over  its 
foe,  whilst  as  to  the  slavery  question  it  was  reposing  in  apparent 
security  upon  the  compromise  measures  of  1850.  The  Whig  party 
had  outlived  the  questions  that  called  it  into  being,  and  that  party 
antagonism  which  kept  up  its  organization  years  after  its  main 
dogmas  had  been  abandoned.  As  if  to  demonstrate  more  fully  that 
its  mission  was  entirely  fulfilled  it  had  espoused  the  democratic 
creed  on  the  subject  of  slavery,  and  perished  at  last  in  the  miser- 
able attempt  thus  to  prolong  its  own  life. 

Under  these  circumstances  the  proposition  to  repeal  the  Missouri 
Compromise  startled  the  country.  Outside  of  the  old  Free  Soil 
Party,  which  still  struggled  for  its  principles,  I  believe  the  measure 
excited  less  opposition  in  Indiana  than  in  any  other  free  State.  It 
is  true  that  the  Whigs  and  many  revolting  Democrats  denounced 
it,  but  their  denunciations  were  leveled  chiefly  against  the  viola- 
tion by  the  South  of  her  compact,  and  the  wickedness  of  reviving 
sectional  agitation,  and  not  against  the  cold-blooded  conspiracy  to 
blast  an  empire  with  slavery.  Their  zeal  for  freedom  appeared  to 
be  less  a  matter  of  conscience,  than  of  geography,  spending  its 
force  north  of  the  Missouri  Restriction.  They  talked  far  more 
eloquently  about  the  duty  of  keeping  covenants  than  the  evils  of 
slavery  extension,  irrespective  of  any  bargain,  however  solemnly 
made.  They  loudly  demanded  the  restoration  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  not  especially  because  the  interests  of  humanity  and 
free  labor  plead  for  it,  not  as  a  mere  preliminary  to  other  measures 
which  should  restore  the  free  States  to  the  fullest  assertion  of  their 
constitutional  rights,  but  as  a  means  of  propitiating  the  spirit  of 
compromise,  and  a  convenient  retreat  to  the  adjustment  acts  of 
1850.  The  sad  truth  is,  that  Indiana  is  the  most  pro-slavery  of 
all  our  Northern  States.  Her  Black  Code,  branded  upon  her 
recreant  forehead  by  a  majority  of  nearly  one  hundred  thousand 
of  her  voters,  tells  her  humiliating  pedigree  far  more  forcibly  than 
any  words  I  could  employ.  Our  people  hate  the  negro  with  a 
perfect,  if  not  a  supreme  hatred,  and  their  anti-slavery,  making  an 
average  estimate,  is  a  superficial  and  sickly  sentiment,  rather  than 


128  INDIANA   POLITICS. 

a  deep-rooted  and  robust  conviction.  Peopled  in  large  proportion 
by  emigrants  from  the  South  and  their  descendants,  with  compari- 
tively  few  from  the  Middle  and  New  England  States,  and  contain- 
ing a  population  of  more  than  seventy  thousand  white  adults  who 
can  neither  read  nor  Avrite,  it  is  not  strange  that  the  slave  power 
has  the  control  of  the  State.  I  mention  these  facts  in  this  con- 
nection because  they  invite  our  attention,  and  should  be  squarely 
confronted  and  honestly  dealt  with  by  those  who  would  work 
wisely  for  the  slave.  The  organization  of  an  anti-slavery  party 
that  shall  rule  the  State  is  not  to  be  the  work  of  a  day.  It  must 
be  the  fruit  of  time,  toil,  and  patience.  We  can  lay  the  founda- 
tions, broad  and  deep,  but  must  build  as  we  can  command  the 
material.  There  was  an  honest  element  in  the  struggle  of  1854, 
but  it  -was,  to  a  great  extent,  overlaid  and  smothered  by  adverse 
influences.  We  had,  strictly  speaking,  no  anti-slavery  party.  It 
was  simply  an  Anti-Nebi^aska  party,  mustering  its  large  numbers 
by  appealing  to  prejudices  essentially  hostile  to  anti-slavery  truth, 
or  at  best  only  distantly  related  to  it. 

But  there  were  two  other  questions  which  entered  extensively 
into  our  politics  at  the  time  of  which  I  speak.  One  of  these  was 
the  Temperance  Question.  Three  years  ago  the  rallying  cry  of 
our  temperance  men  was  "  Seizure,  confiscation,  and  destruction  of 
liquors  kept  for  illegal  sale."  The  demand  for  a  law  embodying 
this  principle,  which  had  been  growing  louder  and  louder  since  the 
enactment  of  the  "  Maine  Law,"  was  reaching  its  climax.  The  ex- 
citement was  at  high  tide.  Many  even  resolved  that  this  question 
should  be  made  paramount  in  the  politics  of  the  State,  and  however 
time  and  experience  may  have  moderated  our  zeal  or  modified  our 
opinions,  such  were  the  numbers,  intelligence,  and  character  of  the 
men  who  embarked  in  this  movement  that  our  politicians  were 
compelled  to  defer  to  their  wishes.  No  party  could  afford  to  trifle 
with  so  potent  an  influence. 

The  other  question  referred  to,  and  which  still  more  compli- 
cated our  political  affairs,  was  Know  Nothingism.  Thousands  were 
made  to  believe  that  the  Romish  Hierarchy  was  rapidly  becoming 
a  dangerous  power  in  "  The  things  that  are  Caesar's, "  and  that  the 
Man  of  Sin  must  be  put  down  at  once  and  at  all  hazards.  Thou- 
sands were  persuaded  that  the  evils  of  foreignism  had  become  so 
alarming  as  to  require  the  most  extraordinary  measures  to  counter- 
act them,  involving  even  the  grossest  injustice  to  the  foreigner 
himself  that  our  native  demagogues  might  be  rebuked  for  pander- 
ing to  his  ignorance  or  brutality.     Thousands,  misled  by  designing 


INDIANA  POLITICS.  129 

knaves,  through  the  arts  of  the  Jesuit,  believed  that  the  cause  of 
freedom  was  to  be  sanctified  and  saved  by  this  new  thing  under 
the  sun.  Thousands,  swayed  by  an  unbridled  credulity,  thought 
that  political  hacks  and  charlatans  were  to  lose  their  occupations 
under  the  reign  of  the  new  Order,  and  that  our  debauched  politics 
were  to  be  thoroughly  purified  by  the  lustration  which  it  promised 
forthwith  to  perform.  Thousands,  eager  to  bolt  from  the  old 
parties,  but  fearful  of  being  shot  down  on  the  way  as  deserters, 
gladly  availed  themselves  of  this  newly  devised  "  Underground 
Railroad  "  in  escaping  from  the  service  of  their  old  masters.  Under 
these  various  influences,  but  chiefly  actuated  by  the  extraordinary 
feeling  which  prevailed  on  the  subject  of  foreign  and  Catholic 
influence,  secret  and  oath-bound  affiliated  lodges  were  established 
throughout  the  country,  which  exerted  a  controlling  influence  over 
political  matters.  These  lodges  were  first  organized  in  Indiana  in 
the  early  part  of  the  year  1854,  and  rapidly  spread  over  the  State. 
Their  grand  aim  was  to  carry  out  their  peculiar  dogmas,  and: 
secure  the  offices  of  the  country;  and  they  enlisted  a  large  majority 
of  those  who  had  been  known  as  Whigs  and  Free  Soilers,  besides. 
great  numbers  of  Democrats,  some  of  whom  stood  openly  with 
their  party,  but  secretly  bolted  by  the  light  of  the  "Dark  Lan- 
tern." Such  were  the  elements  of  the  movement  of  1851,  which, 
first  fused  together  in  the  State  Convention  at  Indianapolis  on. 
the  13th  of  July  of  that  year. 

Here  was  the  favored  opportunity  to  organize  a  party  of  freedom i 
on  a  substantial  .basis.  The  people  were  in  process  of  self-eman- 
cipation from  their  tyrants.  Once  fairly  sundered  from  their  party 
moorings,  they  would  never  again  be  so  effectively  marshaled  in 
the  same  unsanctified  service  ;  and  although  they  were  out  at  sea,, 
and  exposed  to  the  perils  of  the  deep,  they  were  in  little  real  dan- 
ger with  safe  pilots  at  the  helm.  The  charge  of  abolitionism,, 
which  was  incessantly  flung  at  the  Anti-Nebraska  combination 
here,  whilst  it  alarmed  the  timid,  naturally  set  men  to  inquiring 
what  it  meant;  how  they  stood  related  to  slavery,  as  citizens;  and 
whether  their  opposition  to  the  Nebraska  Bill  did  not  require  them, 
to  go  still  further.  It  is  true,  the  dispersion  of  the  old  parties  was. 
a  very  different  thing  from  organizing  a  new  one,  on  just  princi- 
ples ;  but  it  was  an  indispensable  preliminary  to  it,  since  nothing; 
could  be  done  whilst  they  continued  to  control  the  masses.  The 
moment  of  rebellion  against  their  despotism  should  have  been  the- 
chosen  moment  to  mould  the  public  conscience  and  crystallize  the 
popular  thought  around  the  true  central  point  of  union.  Distin- 
9 


130  INDIANA   POLITICS. 

guishing  between  that  which  was  accidental  and  transient,  and 
that  which  was  permanent  in  the  forces  then  at  work,  and  availing 
ourselves  of  the  repeal  of  the  Missiouri  Compromise  as  a  godsend 
to  our  cause,  we  should  have  summoned  the  manhood  of  Indiana 
to  its  rescue.  Both  the  Temperance  men  and  a  majority  of  the 
Know  Nothings  were  more  or  less  imbued  with  anti-slavery  senti- 
ments, whilst  both  stood  ready  to  make  common  cause  against  Old 
Line  Democracy,  and  to  yield  something  of  prejudice,  if  not  of 
conviction,  for  the  sake  of  an  effective  union.  The  Free  Soilers  of 
the  State  were  pretty  largely  represented  in  the  Convention,  and  it 
was  only  necessary  for  them  to  say,  unitedly  and  with  emphasis, 
that  a  Republican  party  should  be  organized,  and  it  would  have 
been  done.  But  the  united  and  emphatic  word  was  not  spoken. 
Fusion  was  the  magic  sound  that  charmed  all  ears.  Resolutions 
were  offered  declaring,  first,  the  principle  of  opposition  to  slavery 
within  constitutional  limits,  and  to  the  extent  of  constitutional 
power;  and  second,  that  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise 
had  destroyed  whatever  of  finality  was  understood  to  pertain  to 
the  compromise  acts  of  1850,  and  remitted  the  free  States  back 
to  their  just  rights  under  the  Federal  Constitution.  These  mod- 
erate resolutions  were  voted  down,  and  others  adopted  by  which 
in  effect,  if  not  in  express  words,  the  restoration  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise  was  made  the  only  specific  basis  of  union.  By  this 
action  of  the  Convention  the  new  movement  was  committed  to  an 
essentially  pro-slavery  policy ;  for  even  the  doughface  could  preach 
the  restor-ation  of  this  compromise  when  expounded  as  the  limit  of 
his  anti-slavery  designs,  as  a  flat  negative  of  the  doctrine  of  slavery 
restriction  generally,  and  merely  as  a  rebuke  to  the  administration 
for  disturbing  the  healing  measures  of  1850.  It  was  a  narrow 
and  double-faeed  issue  at  best,  but  in  this  instance  it  had  only  a  face 
looking  southward.  It  was  a  false  issue,  and  it  was,  besides, 
wholly  impracticable.  Our  more  radical  anti-slavery  men,  how- 
ever, acquiesced.  The  Temperance  men  were  generally  satisfied, 
because  a  resolution  was  adopted  which  met  their  acceptance. 
The  Know  Nothings  were  pleased,  not  only  because  they  liked  the 
platform,  but  because  the  State  ticket  publicly  nominated  at  the 
same  time  had  been  formed  by  the  Order  in  secret  conclave  the 
day  before,  as  the  outside  world  has  since  learned.  Thus  was 
inaugurated  our  "  Fusion  "  or  "  People's  Party,"  for  it  did  not  pre- 
tend to  be  anything  else.  It  was  a  compromise  party.  It  was  "a 
combination  of  weaknesses,"  rather  than  a  union  of  forces.  It 
was  conceived  in  mere  policy  and  the  lust  for  office,  midwifed  by 


INDIANA  POLITICS.  131 

unbelieving  politicians,  and  from  its  birth  cowardice  was   stamped 
upon  its  features. 

The  campaign  thus  begun  was  conducted  as  might  have  been  ex- 
pected. The  Free  Soil  party  was  disbanded,  without  having  com- 
mitted the  people  to  its  doctrines.  Its  members  were  generally  at 
work  in  the  Know  Nothing  lodges,  or,  if  outside,  maintaining  a 
position  of  prudent  subordination  or  absolute  silence,  in  order  "  to 
save  the  Union,"  whilst  new  men  were  in  the  van  of  the  fight, 
disowning  "  Abolitionism,"  expounding  the  platform  as  eminently 
"  national,"  and  exhibiting  such  consummate  gifts  in  prophesying 
smooth  things  as  to  bring  multitudes  on  to  our  side,  not  by  convert- 
ing them  to  the  anti-slavery  gospel,  but  by  disavowing  its  essential 
character  and  spirit.  To  fulminate  radical  opinions  where  it  would 
conduce  to  success,  and  disavow  them  where  it  would  favor  the 
same  result;  to  avoid  giving  offense  to  anti-slavery  men,  and  yet 
administer  the  truth  in  such  homoeopathic  doses  as  not  to  nauseate 
the  doughfaces ;  to  get  hold  of  the  offices  by  a  deceptive  triumph, 
achieved  by  artfully  combining  opposite  and  irreconcilable  ele- 
ments, whilst  pretending  to  labor  for  the  dissemination  of  princi- 
ple, —  these  were  the  methods  employed  by  many  of  the  captains 
who  commanded  the  people  in  this  memorable  campaign.  They 
succeeded  ;  but  that  their  success  materially  aided  the  cause  of 
political  reform  in  the  State,  is  what  I  am  not  prepared  to  admit. 
I  need  not  refer  to  particular  results.  It  is  sufficient  to  know  that 
when  the  victory  was  won,  no  great  principle  could  be  regarded  as 
having  been  settled  by  a  majority  of  the  people  ;  that  it  was  gained 
by  men  unworthy  to  share  it,  because  incapable  of  using  it  for  the 
public  good ;  and  that  the  real  power  of  a  movement  lies  not  so 
much  in  the  numbers  it  can  muster,  as  in  the  principle  which  is  its 
basis,  and  the  loyalty  with  which  men  stand  by  it.  The  "  People's 
Ticket  "  was  carried  by  diplomacy  and  stratagem,  and  not  by  the 
strength  of  a  common  conviction,  and  the  victory  proved,  to  a  great 
extent,  barren  of  good  fruits,  but  prolific  of  bad  ones,  through  its 
demoralizing  example. 

For  observe  now  what  followed.  The  virus  of  "  Fusion  "  had 
so  entered  into  our  political  life  that  few  had  the  courage  even  to 
suggest  the  necessity  of  expelling  it  as  the  first  duty.  The  dis- 
jointed army  must  be  kept  in  the  field,  and  the  power  of  mere 
tactics  again  put  to  the  test.  On  the  13th  of  July,  1855,  another 
fusion  convention  met  at  Indianapolis,  under  the  same  leadership 
as  that  of  the  year  before,  and  adopted  substantially  the  same  plat- 
form.    The  hand  of  Know  Nothingism,  unseen  for  a  time  by  thou- 


132  INDIANA   POLITICS. 

sands  who  bad  struggled  against  Indiana  Democracy,  was  now  dis- 
tinctly visible,  driving  them  in  disgust  from  a  movement  that  bad 
used  them  as  its  unconscious  tools ;  but  the  Order,  though  rapidly 
declining,  still  resolved  to  control  the  combination,  whilst  still  en-' 
deavoring  to  disguise  its  agency.  It  was  very  natural,  therefore, 
that  in  the  local  elections  of  this  year  the  Democrats  were  triumph- 
antly victorious.  It  became  palpable  to  everybody  that  the  restless 
and  jarring  forces  that  had  tugged  together  at  the  same  ropes  for  a 
season  could  never  again  be  effectively  united,  and  that  while  our 
extreme  eagerness  to  succeed  had  given  us  a  nominal  victory,  we 
were  left  without  any  substantial  basis  of  success  in  the  future. 

Our  leaders,  however,  were  bent  upon  carrying  out  still  further 
their  peculiar  line  of  policy.  Early  in  the  spring  of  1856  a  con- 
vention of  the  "  People's  Party  "  was  called  at  Indianapolis,  for 
the  first  of  May.  The  familiar  spirit  of  Know  Nothingism  was 
distinctly  shadowed  forth  in  the  call,  though  a  separate  one  was 
issued  by  the  Order  for  a  convention  on  the  same  day,  and  at  the 
same  place.  The  Temperance  men  were  likewise  again  appealed  to, 
whilst  the  "  People's  "  editors  of  the  State  resolved  to  hold  a  pri- 
vate consultation  at  Indianapolis  on  the  day  before,  several  of  these 
editors  being  Know  Nothings  of  the  Fillmore  type.  Significant 
intimations  were  given  out,  in  various  ways,  that  a  retreat  Avas  con- 
templated, even  from  the  low  ground  occupied  during  the  two  years 
previous  ;  but  it  was  certain,  at  all  events,  that  no  advance  was  to 
be  made. 

The  "  People's  Convention  "  met.  Although  Americanism,  in 
the  form  of  a  secret  organization,  was  more  rapidly  decaying  than 
the  year  before,  those  who  had  been  its  chief  managers  were  in  at- 
tendance, and  prominently  or  secretly  active.  Our  temperance 
law,  the  fruit  of  the  campaign  of  1851,  had  gone  down  under 
judicial  decision,  as  well  as  popular  disapprobation  in  large  divis- 
ions of  the  State  ;  yet  a  resolution  was  adopted  which  necessa- 
rily identified  us  with  its  fortunes,  whilst  no  practical  end  could 
possibly  be  accomplished,  at  that  time,  by  bringing  the  question  to 
the  ballot-box  in  any  form.  Thousands  of  votes  were  lost  by  this 
folly.  On  the  other  hand,  the  slavery  question  was  more  and  more 
engrossing  all  minds  and  stirring  all  hearts.  Republican  organi- 
zations, on  a  broad  anti-slavery  basis,  had  been  launched  in  New 
York,  Massachusetts,  Ohio,  and  other  States,  and  the  organization 
of  a  National  party  had  been  initiated  at  Pittsburg.  All  could 
see  that  the  Democracy  was  to  be  vanquished,  if  at  all,  by  the 
strength  of  the  Republican  idea,  through  the  Republican  organiza- 


INDIANA  POLITICS.  133 

tion  as  its  instrument,  disconnected  with  all  side  issues,  and  free 
from  all  coalitions  whatsoever.  The  Convention,  however,  under 
prevailing  counsels,  whilst  pretending  to  go  considerable  lengths  on 
the  slavery  issues,  dodged  them  all  save  the  single  one  of  Free 
Kansas.  Instead  of  falling  into  line  with  the  movements  referred 
to  in  other  States,  it  expressly  voted  down  a  proposition  to  accept 
even  the  name  Republican.  The  party  was  still  the  "  People's 
Party  ;  "  our  delegates  to  the  National  Republican  Convention 
were  the  "  People's  Delegates  "  to  the  "  People's  Convention  ;  " 
the  State  ticket  nominated  was  the  "  People's  Ticket ; "  our  elec- 
tors were  the  "  People's  Electors  ;  "  and  under  the  preamble  to  the 
platform  adopted,  all  the  "  Silver-Gray  Whigs  "  and  Fillmore  Know 
Nothings  of  the  State  were  recognized  as  brethren  in  full  com- 
munion. At  least  one  man  on  the  State  ticket  was  an  avowed 
Fillmore  man,  whilst  both  Fillmore  and  anti-Fillmore  men  were 
chosen  as  delegates  to  Philadelphia,  and  electors  for  the  State. 
Perfect  consistency  only  demanded  one  additional  step  in  the  pro- 
cess of  leveling  downwards,  giving  the  Democracy  a  common  stake 
in  the  scramble!  Such  a  policy  was  the  climax  of  political  folly, 
to  use  no  harsher  word.  The  golden  moment  for  organizing  a 
party  upon  a  solid  basis  was  seized  by  faithless  leaders,  and  a  shame- 
less scuffle  for  the  spoils  was  substituted  for  a  glorious  battle  for  the 
right. 

Accordingly,  the  policy  which  assumed  to  control  the  canvass 
was  shallow  and  mean  spirited  to  the  last  degree.  The  work  most 
of  all  needed  in  Indiana  was  to  proclaim  the  fundamental  doctrines 
of  Republicanism  boldly,  in  their  whole  length  and  breadth.  If 
there  were  sections  of  the  State  in  which  "  Abolitionism  "  is  more 
dreaded  than  the  brand  of  a  felon,  and  over  which  the  doughface 
is  sovereign,  we  should  have  penetrated  these  dominions,  and  de- 
clared the  truth  to.  the  people.  If  Know  Nothingism  interposed 
its  bigoted  projects  as  a  barrier  to  our  cause,  we  should  have  met 
it  with  the  same  even-handed  opposition  with  which  we  encountered 
our  main  foe.  If  the  slavery  question  had  never  been  generally 
discussed  before  our  people,  and  our  principles  were  everywhere 
misunderstood,  these  facts  supplied  the  strongest  possible  reasons  for 
such  discussion,  suppressing  or  evading  nothing  of  what  we  held 
as  true.  The  evils  of  slavery  should  have  been  unsparingly  por- 
trayed, not  simply  as  a  curse  to  the  soil,  and  a  wrong  to  both  mas- 
ter and  slave,  but  as  an  unspeakable  outrage  upon  man,  and  a 
crime  against  God.  The  slave  system,  not  merely  as  injurious  and 
unprofitable,  but  as  essentially  infernal  in  its  nature,  should  have 


134  INDIANA   POLITICS. 

been  analyzed  and  understood,  as  the  only  solid  basis  of  political 
action  against  it.  If,  thus  honestly  fighting  for  our  principles,  we 
had  yet  failed  at  the  ballot-box,  we  should  have  been  consoled  by 
the  consciousness  of  having  done  our  duty,  and  thus  laid  the  only 
foundation  for  possible  success  in  the  future. 

But  the  darkest  portions  of  our  State  were  abandoned  in  the 
canvass  because  of  their  darkness.  Southern  Indiana,  in  which  the 
fight  should  have  been  hottest  and  most  incessant,  was  mainly  given 
over  to  the  tender  mercies  of  Fillmore  Know  Nothingism  and  Bu- 
chanan Democracy.  The  establishment  of  a  press  there,  to  coun- 
teract these  forces,  was  discountenanced,  lest  pro-slavery  men  should 
vote  against  our  ticket.  The  country  south  of  the  National  Road 
was  forbidden  ground  to  anti-slavery  speakers,  lest  our  success 
should  be  jeoparded  by  the  preaching  of  the  truth.  Clay,  Burlin- 
game,  and  others  from  abroad,  were  employed  where  they  were 
little  needed,  and  studiously  kept  out  of  localities  in  which  their 
services  were  imperatively  demanded,  as  if  a  good  cause  could  hope 
to  triumph  in  the  hands  of  those  who  were  ashamed  or  afraid  to 
espouse  it  in  the  face  of  the  world.  Know  Nothingism  was  petted, 
not  because  it  was  with  us  in  principle,  but  because  we  were  willing 
to  sell  our  principles  for  office.  Neither  the  economical  nor  the  moral 
bearings  of  the  slavery  question  were  much  discussed,  whilst  the 
real  issues  tendered  in  the  Philadelphia  Platform  were  rarely,  if 
ever,  fairly  stated  from  the  stump.  The  general  style  of  our  pub- 
lic speaking  implied  that  the  admission  of  Kansas  as  a  free  State 
was  the  sole  issue.  Border-ruffian  outrages,  and  elaborate  disclaim- 
ers of  "  Abolitionism  "  were  the  regular  staple  of  our  orators. 
What  infinite  pains  were  taken  to  keep  the  "  People's  Party  " 
above  all  taint  of  suspicion  as  to  the  latter  abomination  !  With 
what  emphasis  did  our  leaders  asseverate  that  they  were  not  Aboli- 
tionists, and  had  no  desire  to  interfere  with  slavery  in  the  States, 
or  to  discuss  the  relation  of  master  and  slave  where  it  exists  by 
law  ;  that  our  party  was  exceedingly  National,  and  wonderfully 
friendly  to  the  Union  ;  and  that  at  most  we  only  opposed  the  fur- 
ther extension  of  slavery,  which  the  old  Whig  and  Democratic 
parties  did  years  ago,  whilst  we  were  decidedly  opposed  to  marry- 
ing the  negroes,  or  setting  them  free  among  us  !  Such  were  the 
enticing  words,  the  gingerly  apologies,  and  the  thin-skinned  tac- 
tics which  passed  muster  with  our  State  Central  Committee.  Our 
tender-footed  managers  even  seemed  afraid  of  the  shadoiv  of  Re- 
publicanism, for  they  systematically  suppressed  their  own  electoral 
ticket  during  the  canvass,  till  the  October  election  put  an  end  to 
all  hope  of  a  Union  ticket  with  the  Fillmore  party  ! 


INDIANA  POLITICS.  135 

And  yet,  after  all,  our  State  ticket  was  beaten.  It  received  the 
support  of  thousands  who  had  little  respect  for  it,  but  who  could 
not  see  how  to  withhold  their  votes  without  damaging  the  National 
Ticket.  On  the  other  hand,  the  large  majority  of  Buchanan  over 
Fremont,  as  compared  with  that  of  Willard  over  Morton,  shows 
the  part  which  Know  Nothingism  played,  the  extent  of  our  com- 
plicity with  it,  and  of  the  claim  it  would  undoubtedly  have  made  to 
the  honors  of  victory  had  it  been  achieved.  As  the  triumph  of 
Fremont  was  denied  us,  owing  to  other  causes  than  the  single  loss 
of  Indiana,  I  have  few  tears  to  shed  over  the  result.  Indeed,  did 
I  not  deeply  deplore  the  ascendency  of  Latter-day  Democracy  in  the 
State,  I  could  even  rejoice  ;  for  our  politicians  should  be  taught, 
whatever  it  may  cost,  that  the  unjust  thing  shall  not  prosper.  They 
should  learn,  however  painful  the  lesson,  that  loyalty  to  principle 
is  a  sun  and  a  shield,  and  that  a  shuffling,  ambidextrous  policy  will 
certainly  be  rebuked  by  the  people.  Success,  says  Seneca,  conse- 
crates the  foulest  crimes.  Had  the  slippery  tactics  of  our  leaders 
received  the  premium  of  a  victory,  it  would  have  been  far  more 
disastrous  in  its  influence  hereafter  than  a  merited  defeat,  which 
may  even  bless  us  as  a  timely  reproof  of  our  faithlessness.  I  be- 
lieve, however,  that  by  a  bold  fight  in  Southern  Indiana,  on  the  real 
issue,  confronting  the  Buchanan  and  Fillmore  leaders  at  every 
point,  and  exposing  their  falsehoods,  our  State  could  have  been 
saved.  The  Fillmore  party  would  have  dwindled,  and  timid  men 
from  all  quarters  would  have  been  gathered  under  the  Republican 
banner.  Our  subserviency  necessai'ily  weakened  us,  whilst  strength- 
ening the  hands  of  the  enemy,  and  illustrating  the  truth  that  hon- 
esty is  always  the  best  policy. 

But  how  stands  the  case  with  us  to-day  ?  Have  we  learned  wis- 
dom in  the  dear  school  of  experience  ?  Are  we  ready  frankly  to 
confess  that  we  have  been  swayed  more  by  a  desire  to  enlist  the 
multitude  on  our  side  than  by  an  overmastering  fidelity  to  princi- 
ple ?  Have  we  at  last  found  our  weakness  in  that  which  we  fool- 
ishly mistook  for  our  strength  ?  Have  we  both  seen  and  forsaken 
our  deplorable  infatuation  ?  Gladly  would  I  answer  these  ques- 
tions in  the  affirmative,  if  the  truth  would  permit.  But  we  are 
still,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  floundering  in  the  mire  of  a  godless  expe- 
diency. In  the  early  part  of  last  January,  a  convention  was  held  at 
Indianapolis  which  claimed  to  be  Republican.  It  was  composed  of 
virtually  self-appointed  delegates,  who  had  occasion  to  be  at  the 
capital  at  the  meeting  of  our  legislature.  It  was  called  by  our 
State  Central  Committee,  which  perpetrated  so  much  mischievous 


136  INDIANA  POLITICS. 

folly  last  year,  and  the  Convention,  in  return,  continued  it  in  office. 
This  action,  in  connection  with  some  of  the  resolutions  adopted, 
can  only  be  understood  as  an  indorsement  of  the  blunders  of  the 
past,  and  an  earnest  of  their  repetition  in  the  future.1  And  we  re- 
main dumb.  We  are  mute  and  motionless  under  circumstances  that 
should  stir  men's  blood  and  nerve  their  arms  to  the  most  unhesitat- 
ing and  decided  action.  The  facts  I  state  to-day  respecting  the  mis- 
takes of  the  past  are  known  to  be  true.  They  are  freely  admitted  in 
private  by  all  candid  men.  They  may  be  heard  and  overheard  in  all 
parts  of  the  State  by  those  who  will  listen.  They  find  expression 
in  the  significant  mutterings  of  the  people,  and  occasional  tokens 
of  alarm  among  our  politicians  ;  but  they  are  effectually  stifled  by 
the  devil-worship  of  mere  policy,  which  lays  its  icy  fingers  upon 
the  moral  sense  of  the  people. 

The  Slave  Power  in  the  mean  time  is  not  idle.  It  has  the  su- 
preme federal  judiciary  in  its  keeping,  with  its  Dred  Scott  decision 
already  finding  its  way  into  the  Democratic  Platform,  and  diffusing 
its  poison  over  these  States.  It  has  both  houses  of  Congress.  It 
has  the  National  Executive,  with  the  immense  power  and  patron- 
age of  the  government,  and  the  prestige  of  assured  ascendency  in 
the  future.  It  holds  the  State  of  Indiana  as  in  the  hollow  of  its 
hand,  moulding  its  policy  in  all  tilings  according  to  its  own  purpose, 
and  able  to  boast  that  there  is  no  party  in  the  State  that  can  con- 
front it  with  clean  hands,  or  that  cares  enough  about  its  principles 
to- fight  for  them,  save  when  the  hope  of  office  stimulates  the  flag- 
ging zeal  of  its  leaders.  Our  politicians  are  silent ;  the  anti- Ad- 
ministration press  of  the  State  gives  out,  at  best,  an  uncertain 
sound  ;  the  people  are  absorbed  in  the  concerns  of  private  business 
and  the  growing  materialism  of  the  times ;  whilst  the  old  soldiers 
of  freedom  who  were  at  first  accustomed  to  "  cry  aloud  and  spare 
not,"  appear  to  have  lost  their  zeal,  if  not  their  faith,  in  the  cause 
for  Avhich  they  were  once  ready  to  sacrifice  honor,  propertv,  and 
life. 

And  now,  my  friends,  what  shall  be  said  to  relieve  this  dark  pic- 
ture ?  What  shall  be  done,  rather,  to  relieve  the  anti-slavery  cause, 
wounded  in  the  house  of  its  friends  ?  My  answer  may  readily  be 
gathered  from  what  I  have  said.  Three  several  remedies,  all  har- 
monizing with  each  other,  should  be  applied. 

1  And  they  were  repeated  the  next  year.  In  the  spring  of  1858,  the  Republicans 
of  Indiana,  in  State  Convention,  threw  the  National  Platform  of  1856  overboard,  and 
cut  down  the  issue  with  the  slaveholders  to  the  single  one  of  "  Anti-Lecompton."  This 
was  done  in  the  interest  of  conservatism,  and  for  the  sake  of  success;  but  the  State 
ticket  nominated  very  naturally  was  defeated. 


INDIANA   POLITICS.  137 

I.  A  Republican  party,  strictly  speaking,  has  not  to  this  day 
been  formed  in  the  State.  Such  a  party  should  at  once  be  organ- 
ized. As  the  Democratic  party  now  has  but  one  idea,  namely, 
slavery,  so  our  organization  should  be  based  upon  one  idea,  namely, 
anti-slavery.  We  should  ignore  or  postpone  every  other.  We 
should  say  to  whatever  side  issue,  as  Christ  said  to  Satan,  "  Get 
thee  behind  me."  Every  passing  year  is  vindicating  the  philosophy 
of  the  pioneers  of  our  cause,  and  pleading  for  this  policy.  We 
should,  above  all  things,  shun  every  form  of  partnership  with  Know 
Nothingism  hereafter.  Pretending  to  herald  a  new  era  in  politics, 
in  which  the  people  were  to  take  the  helm  and  expel  demagogues 
and  traders  from  the  ship,  it  reduced  political  swindling  to  the 
certainty  and  system  of  an  exact  science.  It  drew  to  itself,  as  the 
great  festering  centre  of  corruption,  all  the  known  political  rascal- 
ities of  the  last  generation,  and  assigned  them  to  active  duty  in  its 
service.  Persisting,  during  the  past  three  years,  in  its  work  of 
dividing  and  alienating;  those  who  should  have  stood  together  as 
one  man  against  the  common  foe,  it  has  been  at  once  a  thorn  in 
the  side  of  Republicanism,  and  a  sure  help  for  Old  Line  Democ- 
racy ;  for  the  pen  of  history  will  record,  that  through  its  diabolical 
intervention  the  Slave  Oligarchy  has  been  installed  in  the  National 
Administration  till  the  year  1860.  Whether  sweeping  over  our 
towns  and  cities  like  a  tropical  tornado,  scattering  devastation  and 
death  in  its  track,  or  walking  in  darkness  and  wasting  at  noon- 
day, like  the  pestilence ;  whether  judged  by  its  unchristian  dogmas, 
or  its  ungodly  oath  and  ritual,  Know  Nothingism  is  an  embodied 
lie  of  the  first  magnitude,  a  horrid  conspiracy  against  decency, 
the  rights  of  man,  and  the  principle  of  human  brotherhood. 
Our  cause  owes  it  nothing  but  the  most  unwavering  opposition, 
so  long  as  a  vestige  of  its  evil  life  remains.  We  have  nothing 
to  hope  from  it,  whether  we  find  it  lingering  outside  of  the  Repub- 
lican movement  under  such  leaders  as  Thompson  and  Gregg, 
or  prowling  in  our  ranks,  "  with  its  eye  fixed  on  its  own  navel," 
under  the  lead  of  pretended  Republicans.  It  is  not  of  us,  with  us, 
nor  for  us,  and  we  should  recoil  from  its  contaminating  touch. 
Whether  meeting  us  in  its  old  habiliments,  announcing  its  savage 
dogmas  in  their  undisguised  features,  or  masquerading  under  the 
hypocritical  pretense  of  simply  desiring  a  change  in  our  State 
constitution  as  to  foreign  suffrage  ;  whether  we  find  it  taking  up 
the  trade  of  "  Union-saving,"  and  openly  meeting  us  on  the  issues 
of  Republicanism,  or  flavoring  its  unpalatable  dish  with  anti-slavery, 
in  the  hope  of  prolonging  its  life  and  inviting  our  recognition,  it 


138  INDIANA  POLITICS. 

will  be  found  to  be,  as  heretofore,  our  enemy,  and  should  be  dealt 
with  as  such  by  every  man  who  has  our  principles  at  heart.  It  is 
both  the  interest  and  duty  of  Republicanism,  not  simply  to  terminate 
its  political  career,  but  to  shake  off,  unmistakably,  every  appear- 
ance of  fellowship  with  its  unfruitful  works.  Nothing  short  of  this 
can  recover  for'us  the  ground  we  have  lost,  and  save  our  movement 
from  the  mischiefs  which  lie  in  wait  for  it,  if  its  anomalous  position 
towards  this  secret  Order  shall  be  further  maintained.  I  say  these 
things,  my  friends,  for  no  idle  purpose.  I  warn  you  against  this 
distracting  element,  because  it  still  infests  our  country.  Let  no  man 
be  deceived.  In  Massachusetts  it  impudently  assumes  to  muster 
the  Republican  party  into  its  service.  In  Pennsylvania,  notwith- 
standing the  lessons  of  the  past,  it  manages  to  keep  up  its  combi- 
nation with  the  men  who  supported  Colonel  Fremont.  It  even 
shows  some  signs  of  a  mischievous  resurrection  in  Ohio.  Busily 
plotting  for  the  future  during  the  political  slumber  that  has  over- 
taken the  people,  it  begins  to  crop  out  of  late  in  various  parts  of 
our  country.  The  slimy  serpent  still  lives,  and  to-day,  I  doubt  not, 
is  secretly  coiling  itself  about  the  neck  of  the  Republican  move- 
ment, intending  to  caress  us  into  a  further  embrace,  or  fasten  its 
fangs  in  our  vitals.  I  ask  you  to  have  an  eye  upon  it,  to  repel 
its  slightest  advances,  to  refuse  it  all  hospitality,  in  whatever  shape 
it  may  appear,  and  to  guard  the  future  by  making  sure  of  its  total 
dislodgment  from  our  politics,  its  final  sentence  to  the  execration 
of  history. 

My  friends,  I  beg  of  you  to  stand  squarely  upon  your  principles, 
and  trust  in  their  saving  power.  Believing  them  to  be  true,  we 
should  no  more  doubt  their  triumph,  through  our  fidelity,  than  we 
doubt  the  government  of  the  world  by  a  Providence.  Abjuring 
all  coalitions,  all  attempts  to  carry  a  point  by  compromising  or  con- 
cealing the  truth,  relying  exclusively  upon  the  "  one  idea  "  which 
makes  up  our  great  issue  with  the  slave  power,  and  starting  out 
with  the  real  difficulties  of  our  enterprise  in  full  view,  but  with 
faith  in  the  impregnating  power  of  the  truth,  we  should  forthwith 
take  up  the  line  of  march  so  gloriously  begun  in  other  States.  The 
world  would  then  bear  witness  that  we  are  not  an  organized  horde 
of  spoils-hunting  demagogues,  scheming  and  plotting  over  questions 
of  public  plunder,  but  a  band  of  brothers,  seeking  to  rescue  the 
government  from  the  vandals  who  control  it.  The  Republican 
cause  would  be  committed  to  the  hands  of  the  people,  while  politi- 
cians by  trade  would  be  driven  from  the  places  they  have  so  long 
usurped.     Instead  of  aspiring  to  be  the  leaders  of  public  opinion, 


INDIANA   POLITICS.  139 

they  are  its  mere  echo  and  breath.  They  have  no  faith  in  principle. 
Expediency  is  the  law  of  their  lives.  They  believe  in  a  plausible 
fallacy  rather  than  the  truth.  They  cherish  a  secret  contempt  for 
the  people.  They  affect  a  mortal  dread  of  adopting  measures  in 
advance  of  the  masses,  whilst  they  themselves  artfully  block  up  the 
way  of  progress.  Faithless,  cowardly,  half-hearted,  often  unprin- 
cipled, and  always  judging  the  world  by  themselves,  they  are  to  be 
ranked  among  the  worst  moral  scourges  of  the  times.  No  good 
cause  can  hope  to  prosper  till  it  shall  renounce,  entirely,  all  alle- 
giance to  this  pestilent  tribe.  Let  our  movement  do  this,  and  the 
Republican  principle,  having  free  course,  and  becoming  incarnate 
in  the  popular  heart,  will  be  able  to  take  care  of  itself.  The  best 
service  men  can  render  it  is  to  leave  it  unshackled.  "  Truth  is 
bread  to  the  soul."  Such  is  its  inherent  power  that  it  often  over- 
rules the  combined  folly  and  knavery  of  its  professed  guardians. 
It  has  even  made  considerable  progress  in  Indiana  within  the  past 
three  years.  Mingled  with  the  dirty  strifes  of  our  local  politics, 
and  hawked  about  in  the  public  market  as  an  unclean  thing,  whilst 
politically  married  against  its  will,  it  has  yet  exhibited  a  vitality 
not  less  remarkable  than  the  weakness  and  worthlessness  of  its 
allies  and  pretended  auxiliaries.  Its  triumph,  as  I  firmly  trust,  is 
simply  a  question  of  time  ;  and  whilst  we  keep  our  hearts  whole 
with  this  faith  we  should  courageously  go  forward  in  the  work  of 
hastening  its  coming. 

II.  I  pass  to  the  second  remedy  for  our  political  disorders.  The 
grand  folly  of  our  leaders  of  late,  and  the  underlying  source  of 
all  minor  errors,  has  been  the  inordinate  longing  for  Immediate 
Success.  This  evil  spirit,  which  has  possessed  us  since  the  repeal  of 
the  Missouri  Compromise,  must  be  cast  out  before  Republicanism 
can  honestly  hold  up  its  head  in  Indiana.  It  made  shipwreck  of 
our  cause  in  1854,  and  up  to  this  hour  is  persisting  in  its  stupid 
policy,  regardless  of  its  evil  fruits  everywhere  visible.  Several 
considerations  demand  its  absolute  repudiation  as  a  principle  of 
political  action  in  future. 

In  the  first  place,  Republicanism,  taken  at  its  word,  is  based  upon 
the  truths  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  its  mission  is 
their  practical  vindication.  These  truths  are  simply  the  teachings 
of  the  New  Testament  translated  into  politics.  Our  cause,  there- 
fore, is  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  angry  strifes  and  despicable 
squabbles  of  place-hunters,  but  elevated  to  the  dignity  of  a  great 
moral  enterprise.  It  exacts  the  sympathy  and  service  of  all  men, 
irrespective  of  personal  honor  or  reward.    The  grand  aim  of  its 


140  INDIANA   POLITICS. 

friends  is  not  to  possess  office,  but  to  create  a  sentiment  strong 
enough  to  command  respect,  whoever  may  be  in  power.  The  spread 
of  our  principles  is  the  work  to  be  done,  whether  Republicans  can 
be  elected  to  posts  of  honor  and  profit  or  not,  and  leaving  that  as  a 
matter  purely  incidental  to  our  enterprise.  Our  work,  therefore, 
should  be  as  unceasingly  prosecuted  as  the  missionary  cause,  or  any 
other  moral  or  Christian  movement.  Far  more  could  be  done  for  it 
this  year,  when  no  offices  are  to  be  filled,  and  the  people  are  their 
own  masters,  than  will  be  possible  next  year,  when  whole  swarms 
of  politicians  will  darken  the  air,  and  volunteer  their  pernicious  coun- 
sels. Opinion  is  power.  Daniel  Webster  once  declared  it  to  be  "  the 
mightiest  power  on  earth."  "  Opinion,"  says  Dr.  Channing,  "  is 
stronger  than  kings,  mobs,  Lynch  laws,  or  any  other  laws  for  the 
suppression  of  thought  and  speech."  The  man  who  does  most  in 
building  up  in  Indiana  a  public  sentiment  utterly  hostile  to  the  in- 
stitution of  slavery,  is  the  most  deserving  of  honor  and  leadership 
in  the  Republican  organization.  To  compromise  or  blink  the 
truths  of  Republicanism,  for  the  sake  of  any  temporary  success,  is 
to  betray  and  crucify  them.  To  succeed  in  getting  the  offices  of  the 
State  from  the  Old  Liners  by  cunning  political  management,  and 
not  by  an  honest  fight,  and  as  a  testimony  in  favor  of  our  princi- 
ples, is  to  accomplish  nothing  and  degrade  our  own  manhood. 
During  the  last  summer  one  of  our  ablest  journals  used  the  follow- 
ing language  in  reference  to  the  national  struggle  then  pending  :  — 

"  There  is  one  great  truth  which  the  politician  never  learns,  although  the 
history  and  experience  of  all  ages  are  constantly  confirming  it  with  their  testi- 
mony, —  that  the  success  of  the  party  is  not  necessary  to  the  triumph  of  the 
principle.  For  liis  own  sake,  it  is  advisable  for  the  partisan  to  adhere  to  the 
principle  ;  but  the  principle,  when  it  is  true,  takes  care  of  itself.  An  organiza- 
tion, calling  itself  the  Republican  party,  may  elect  the  next  President  of  these 
United  States,  and  yet  that  result  be  of  not  the  least  imaginable  significance 
relatively  to  the  principles  of  Republicanism.  From  Bunker  Hill  to  Saratoga 
there  was  scarcely  a  decided  victory  to  the  colonial  arms,  and  yet  in  the  midst 
of  defeat  and  disaster  freedom  was  spreading  its  roots  strong  and  deep  in 
American  soil,  and  preparing  for  a  giant  growth  in  after  ages ;  and,  with  all 
the  kings  and  priests  and  armies  of  the  Continent  against  it,  the  Protestantism 
of  our  European  ancestors  never  spread  so  rapidly  as  when  the  cry  went  forth 
from  prince  and  prelate  and  general  to  exterminate  its  professors." 

Who  will  deny  this  ?  And  who  does  not  see  that  the  Repub- 
licans, although  defeated  in  the  struggle  for  the  presidency,  gained 
a  real  triumph?  Their  principles  were  thoroughly  discussed,  and 
disseminated  far  and  wide.  They  took  root  in  thousands  of  hearts 
that  had  never  before    been   touched.     Old    party   organizations 


INDIANA   POLITICS.  141 

were  consumed  in  the  fervent  heart  of  the  new  movement,  whilst 
even  doughfaces  were  made  to  tremble  in  view  of  the  retribution 
which  they  saw  prefigured  in  the  general  commotion.  Buchanan 
was  elected ;  but  that  the  moral  power  of  our  large  vote  for  Fre- 
mont will  exert  a  shaping  influence  over  his  administration,  is 
what  no  man  can  doubt.  I  believe  it  has  already  secured  Kansas 
to  freedom,  as  the  Free  Soil  agitation  of  1848  saved  Oregon  and 
California  ;  whilst  if  Fremont  had  succeeded,  with  politicians  in 
his  cabinet,  with  a  Congress  against  him,  and  only  a  partially  de- 
veloped anti-slavery  sentiment  to  sustain  him,  perhaps  even  less 
would  have  been  done  for  the  growth  of  our  cause  than  is  now 
practicable,  unembarrassed  by  the  responsibilities  of  power,  with  a 
probation  of  three  or  four  years  to  prepare  for  the  next  contest, 
and  free  to  profit  by  the  strifes  and  troubles  of  our  foe.  Our  suc- 
cess would  have  periled  our  principles.  The  revolution  so  hope- 
fully begun  might  have  been  arrested  by  half- way  measures, 
promoting  the  slumber,  rather  than  the  agitation  of  the  truths  we 
teach;  whilst  the  irritating  nostrums  of  Buchanan  Democracy,  so 
necessary  to  display  the  horrors  of  the  disease  preying  upon  our 
body  politic,  might  have  been  lost  to  us.  The  power  of  the  ballot, 
when  cast  for  the  right,  irrespective  of  the  particular  result,  is  so 
forcibly  illustrated  in  the  great  struggle  of  last  fall,  that  we  may 
hope  to  hear  no  more  abuse  of  anti-slavery  men  for  throwing  away 
their  votes. 

Again,  the  policy  which  makes  present  success  the  basis  of  our 
action  is  an  ever-present  temptation  to  achieve  it  by  unscrupulous 
methods,  and  even  by  trampling  down  the  principle  for  the  sake  of 
which  alone  success  is  desirable.  It  sacrifices  the  end  to  the 
means.  If  the  people  are  not  ready  for  the  truth,  it  suppresses 
the  truth,  or  so  mixes  it  with  falsehood  as  to  make  it  tolerable.  It 
thus  often  becomes  the  most  formidable  obstacle  to  the  progress  of 
the  cause  it  espouses.  It  bribes  us  to  become  "  all  things  to  all 
men."  It  caused  our  leaders  last  year  to  pander  to  the  pro-slavery 
influences  of  the  State  by  declaring  the  Republican  party  to  be 
"  The  white  man's  party."  It  employed  them  in  the  service  of 
slavery  by  putting  into  their  mouths  a  perpetual  protest  against 
every  form  of  "  abolitionism."  This  cowardly  policy,  applied  to 
the  work  of  Christianizing  the  world,  would  not  only  eternize 
slavery,  but  cannibalism,  widow-burning,  and  every  form  of  human 
diabolism  under  the  sun.  It  would  bring  down  Christianity  to  the 
level  of  the  meanest  capacity,  where  our  leaders  would  drag  Re- 
publicanism, and  the  work  of  the  missionary  would  cease  because 


142  INDIANA   POLITICS. 

the  devil  would  be  God.  It  would  immolate,  as  it  too  often  has 
done,  our  tried  and  trusted  men  whose  labors  and  sacrifices  leave 
no  shadow  of  doubt  as  to  their  fidelity,  and  canonize  as  heroes  and 
load  with  honors  those  who  have  coolly  looked  on  and  watched  the 
signs  of  the  political  zodiac,  till  favoring  winds  are  ready  to  bear 
them  upwards.  Carry  this  policy  to  its  legitimate  results,  and 
Seward,  Chase,  Sumner,  Hale,  and  even  Colonel  Fremont,  must 
be  thrust  aside  in  1860,  to  make  way  for  the  editor  of  the  "  New 
York  Herald,"  if  success  over  the  Democracy  can  be  most  certainly 
secured  in  that  way ;  and  should  we  argue  with  the  friends  of  such 
a  policy  that  defeat  with  a  representative  man  is  preferable  to  suc- 
cess with  an  available  ticket,  we  should  be  branded  as  impractica- 
ble men,  if  not  dangerous  fanatics  and  enemies  of  the  Republican 
cause. 

This  sickly  desire  for  present  success  arouses  an  anti-slavery  zeal 
which  immediately  subsides  when  the  temporary  occasion  of  it 
has  passed  away.  It  foolishly  hopes  for  the  triumph  of  freedom 
through  noisy  demonstrations  of  excited  political  contests,  occur- 
ring at  distant  intervals,  instead  of  systematic  efforts,  prosecuted 
from  year  to  year,  for  the  spread  of  needed  information  among  the 
people.  It  inspires  unbounded  faith  in  tactics,  in  expediency,  in 
compromises  and  coalitions,  and  thus  practically  confesses  that  the 
principle  involved  is  not  strong  enough  to  stand  on  its  own  feet. 
It  forgets  that  a  small  party,  loyal  to  principle,  wields  more  power 
than  a  large  one,  built  up  by  compromises  and  surrenders.  It 
forgets  that  with  parties,  as  with  individuals,  character  is  above  all 
price,  and  that  popularity  and  present  success  must  often  be  sacri- 
ficed for  its  sake.  It  forgets  that  the  kind  of  influence  exerted  by 
a  political  movement  is  far  more  important  than  the  quantity  of  it, 
and  that  Providence,  by  an  immutable  law,  denies  to  us  any  real 
success,  except  as  the  consequence  and  reward  of  fidelity  to  prin- 
ciple. My  friends,  let  me  commend  these  thoughts  to  your  earnest 
consideration,  and  ask  you  if  our  whole  policy  must  not  be  re- 
versed, if  we  would  ever  redeem  Indiana  from  slaveholdino;  rule  ? 
Surely  we  have  sought  out  new  inventions  and  worshipped  strange 
gods  long  enough. 

III.  Lastly,  the  people  need  an  intelligent  apprehension  of  their 
political  relations  to  slavery.  This  is  the  third  necessity  of  our 
politics  under  my  arrangement,  but  is  in  fact  first  in  importance. 
The  people  "  lack  for  knowledge."  The  cause  of  freedom  lan- 
guishes chiefly  for  this  reason,  and  not  because  of  any  general 
insensibility  to  the  sufferings  of  the  slave,  or  unmixed  hardness  of 


INDIANA   POLITICS.  143 

heart.  We  must  have  a  platform  ;  and  allow  me  to  say  here  that  I 
totally  disagree  with  those  who  would  abandon  all  platforms  and 
platform  making.  I  know  that  knaves  and  demagogues  have  a 
pretty  large  share  in  the  building  of  these  modern  political  fabrics, 
and  that  bad  platforms  and  much  mischief  are  sometimes  the  result. 
I  know  that  men  often  persuade  themselves  to  spit  upon  a  plat- 
form, and  then  swallow  down  at  one  gulp  the  candidate  who 
stands  upon  it,  and  refuses  to  stand  anywhere  else.  I  admit  also 
that  platforms  are  now  and  then  converted  into  so  many  spring- 
boards, from  which  the  loftiest  kind  of  somersaults  are  made.  Still, 
I  believe  they  have  a  very  important  significance  and  use.  The 
principle  on  which  they  rest  is  the  need  of  a  compendium  of  intel- 
ligible affirmations,  embodying  the  essential  truth  in  politics,  as  a 
basis  of  political  action  and  a  guide  in  the  administration  of  public 
affairs. 

We  are  taught  by  the  great  lights  of  the  world  in  the  depart- 
ments of  morals  and  theology  that  doctrine  goes  before  duty, 
theory  before  practice,  right  believing  before  right  acting.  They 
say  we  must  first  find  out  the  truth,  and  then  duty,  or  the  practical 
service  of  that  truth,  will  result  as  its  crowning  flower  and  fruit. 
As  a  general  proposition  I  subscribe  to  this,  and  I  apply  it  to  poli- 
tics. If  the  heart  must  be  reached  through  the  head,  with  a  view 
to  any  genuine  reform  of  the  individual,  it  is  just  as  true  that  the 
heart  of  the  North  must  be  reached  through  the  brain  of  the 
North,  with  a  view  to  any  really  effective  service  of  the  cause  of 
freedom.  What  are  the  relations  which  we  in  the  free  States 
sustain  towards  the  peculiar  institution  of  the  slave  States?  What 
are  the  duties  on  our  part  resulting  from  those  relations  ?  These 
are  pertinent  andj  practical  questions,  meeting  us  at  the  very 
threshold  of  any  intelligent  thought  or  action  on  our  part.  They 
must  be  answered,  and  the  answer,  when  written  down  in  well, 
chosen  words,  will  be  a  platform,  a  political  confession  of  faith,  or 
whatever  other  terms  may  be  employed  to  convey  the  same  idea. 
Here  is  the  true  starting-point,  and  the  shallow  sophism  that  it 
matters  not  what  a  man  believes,  is  as  pernicious  in  politics  as  in 
morals.  One  may  indignantly  brand  slaveholding  as  the  sum  of 
all  villainies,  hate  it  as  a  thing  unutterably  detestable,  and  paint 
it  in  colors  as  black  as  the  open  mouth  of  the  Pit ;  and  yet,  if  the 
platform  to  which  he  subscribes  teaches  him  that  he  has  nothing  to 
do  with  slavery,  as  a  citizen  of  the  free  States,  his  words  are  but  as 
sounding  brass  or  a  tinkling  cymbal. 


144  INDIANA   POLITICS. 

The  subject  of  platforms,  therefore,  is  one  of  first-rate  impor- 
tance. Every  thinking  man  must  regard  it  as  involving  all  that  is 
vital  in  our  political  contentions.  Every  candidate  for  an  impor- 
tant trust  should  be  required  to  make  a  public  confession  of  faith, 
as  an  indispensable  condition  of  popular  acceptance.  Should  he 
betray  the  people,  let  them  lay  hold  of  the  best  plank  in  his  plat- 
form as  a  bludgeon,  and  publicly  pelt  him  by  way  of  example  and 
warning  to  like  infidelity  in  future.  Should  either  politicians  or 
people  apostatize  from  a  faith  once  publicly  professed,  let  them  be 
exhorted,  in  words  taken  out  of  their  own  mouths,  to  return  and 
stand  fast.  Platforms  are  thus  not  only  a  political  necessity,  but 
they  are  instructive  memorials  of  our  shifting  American  politics, 
and  often  very  convenient  weapons  in  the  exciting  strifes  of  our 
times. 

But  quitting  these  general  observations,  I  come  to  the  Philadel- 
phia Platform  ;  and  allow  me  to  say,  that  as  an  enunciation  of  essen- 
tial anti-slavery  truth,  I  accept  it  as  sufficient.  I  do  not  subscribe  to 
the  false  readings  that  have  been  given  it,  either  by  its  foes  or  mis- 
taken friends ;  but  guided  by  its  obvious  letter  and  spirit,  I  deci- 
dedly prefer  my  own  conclusions.  Let  me  state,  as  explicitly  as  I 
can,  the  issues  which  it  tenders  on  the  subject  of  slavery  ;  because 
this  task,  as  I  have  already  observed,  was  very  generally  omitted 
during  the  late  canvass,  whilst  perversions  and  misrepresentations 
were  the  order  of  the  day.  I  can  scarcely  imagine  a  more  shame- 
less caricature  of  the  Philadelphia  Platform  than  was  perpetrated 
by  a  distinguished  Republican  politician  in  Wall  Street  last  fall  ; 
and  did  I  accept  his  exposition  of  it,  I  would  denounce  it,  as  I  do 
the  dishonest  audacity  that  could  thus  insult  the  intelligence  of  the 
people. 

The  Philadelphia  Convention  affirmed,  unequivocally,  the  right 
and  duty  of  Congress  to  prohibit  slavery  in  all  the  Territories  of 
the  United  States.  It  was  not  content  with  a  general  declaration 
of  opposition  to  the  extension  of  slavery,  which  would  have  meant 
nothing;  it  did  not  say  one  word  about  the  restoration  of  the  Mis- 
souri Compromise,  which  our  Indiana  politicians  have  so  cunningly 
used  as  a  two-edged  sword  in  smiting  slavery  and  anti-slavery  at  the 
same  time  ;  it  did  not  say  one  word  implying  that  the  enormity  of 
slavery  was  lost  sight  of  in  the  indignation  excited  by  a  violated 
compact  between  the  North  and  the  South  ;  but  it  plainly  recog- 
nized all  the  Territories  of  the  Union  as  alike  exposed  to  the  rav- 
ages of  slavery,  and  alike  invoking  its  interdiction  therein  by  Con- 
gress,    This  was  the  position  ;  and  when  we  remember  that  our 


INDIANA   POLITICS.  145 

Territories  contain  an  area  as  large  as  that  of  all  the  thirty-one 
States  of  the  Union,  and  that  in  all  these  vast  regions  freedom  is 
put  in  deadly  peril  by  the  Slave  Democracy,  we  may  form  some 
idea  of  the  magnitude  of  the  issue  thus  presented. 

In  the  next  place,  the  Platform  reaffirms  the  great  constitu- 
tional principle  embodied  in  the  Buffalo  and  Pittsburg  Platforms, 
that  no  man  shall  be  deprived  of  life,  liberty,  or  property,  without 
due  process  of  law ;  and  this  grand  central  doctrine,  the  enforce- 
ment of  which  would  annihilate  our  Fugitive  Slave  Act,  is  expressly 
applied  to  the  question  of  slavery  in  our  Territories.  The  platform 
also  explicitly  denies  "  the  authority  of  Congress,  of  a  territorial 
legislature,  of  any  individual  or  association  of  individuals,  to  give 
legal  existence  to  slavery  in  any  Territory  of  the  United  States, 
while  the  present  Constitution  shall  be  maintained."  Slavery  is 
thus  declared  to  be  legally  and  constitutionally  impossible  in  the 
Territories.  The  relation  of  master  and  slave  can  no  more  be 
created  or  permitted  there,  than  the  relation  of  monarch  and  sub- 
ject. We  have  thus  the  principle  of  "  no  more  slave  States  "  fully 
recognized  ;  for  if  there  can  be  no  legal  slavery  in  the  Territories,. 
no  slave  States  can  legally  be  formed  out  of  them.  The  slave 
could  not  breathe  there,  nor  could  the  slaveholder,  as  such,  tread 
the  soil.  Consecrated  to  freedom  up  to  the  moment  of  their  ad- 
mission, there  would  be  nobody  to  ask  for  a  slaveholding  constitu- 
tion, nor  could  Congress  tolerate  it  without  recognizing  the  very  au- 
thority which  is  denied  both  to  it  and  to  the  people.  As  to  the  right 
of  a  State,  after  admission,  to  establish  slavery,  it  can  only  be  re- 
garded as  an  unmeaning  abstraction,  since  the  history  of  the  world 
furnishes  no  instance  of  a  people  once  in  the  enjoyment  of  freedom 
deliberately  casting  it  away  for  slavery. 

This  doctrine  I  regard  as  fundamental.  Its  affirmation  at  Phil- 
adelphia was  demanded  by  the  state  of  our  country,  and  the  policy 
of  the  administration.  Democracy  places  the  rights  of  slavery  in 
the  Territories  above  Congress,  above  the  people  who  inhabit  them, 
above  the  Constitution,  above  every  power  save  the  will  of  the 
slave  breeder  himself.  The  troubles  in  Kansas  have  grown  out  of 
the  attempt  to  overturn  the  settled  policy  of  the  government,  and 
to  inaugurate,  at  all  hazards,  this  asserted  supremacy  of  slavery. 
The  denial  of  this  doctrine  has  been  dealt  with  as  felony  and  trea- 
son. It  was  fit,  therefore,  that  this  issue  should  be  squarely  met,  by 
planting  the  right  to  freedom  in  the  Territories  upon  the  broad 

ground  of  natural  justice  and  the  Federal  Constitution,  and  deny- 

10 


146  INDIANA   POLITICS. 

ing  to  any  power  on  earth  the  right  to  legalize  slavery  on  their 
soil. 

Again,  the  Republican  Platform  declares  that  it  was  "  the  primary 
object  and  ulterior  design  of  the  Federal  Constitution  to  secure 
the  right  of  life  and  liberty  to  all  persons  under  its  exclusive  juris- 
diction." Of  course  this  "  primary  object  and  ulterior  design  " 
must  be  faithfully  carried  out,  and  if  so,  slavery  will  have  no  foot- 
hold anywhere  outside  of  the  slave  States.  It  will  be  abolished  in 
our  Federal  District ;  it  will  be  denied  the  protection  of  our  flag 
on  the  high  seas,  and  in  its  execrable  traffic  in  humanity  now  car- 
ried on  by  authority  of  Congress  on  our  southeast  coast ;  our  Great 
National  Black  Law  for  the  recovery  of  fugitives  will  be  blotted 
out ;  all  federal  enactments  in  behalf  of  slavery  will  be  repealed  ; 
the  vast  power  and  patronage  of  the  National  Government  will  be 
rescued  from  the  active  and  zealous  service  of  the  slave  interest, 
and  dedicated  as  actively  and  zealously  to  the  service  of  freedom  ; 
in  short,  the  peculiar  institution,  shorn  of  its  "  nationality,"  and 
staggering  under  its  own  weight,  will  inevitably  dwindle  and  die. 
Give  me  the  power  to  cut  up  slavery,  root  and  branch,  wherever 
the  federal  authority  legitimately  extends,  and  I  will  open  veins 
•enough  to  bleed  the  monster  to  death.  Breathe  into  our  national 
life  a  sentiment  strong  enough  to  ripen  into  such  legislation,  and 
■the  backbone  of  the  slave  power  will  be  broken.  Do  you  tell  me 
that  the  policy  of  mere  limitation,  of  national  discouragement,  has 
failed,  as  a  means  of  destroying  slavery?  It  has  failed  as  a  remedy 
for  the  spread  of  slavery.  It  has  failed,  because  of  our  hatred  of  the 
negro,  and  our  practical  sympathy  for  his  master,  prompting  us,  as 
often  as \ve  declare  our  opposition  to  the  extension  of  slavery,  to 
affirm  our  emphatic  acquiescence  in  its  indefinite  rule  where  it  ex- 
ists. It  has  failed,  because,  for  nearly  forty  years,  we  have  chosen 
doughfaces  to  represent  us  in  Congress,  who  have  set  a  higher 
value  upon  mere  politics  and  the  dollar  than  upon  humanity  itself. 
It  has  failed,  because  we  ourselves  have  been  false  to  what  we  pro- 
fessed. Had  we  unitedly  resisted  the  policy  that  made  our  Florida 
wars,  annexed  Texas,  plunged  us  into  our  savage  strife  with  Mex- 
ico, carried  the  compromise  measures  of  1850,  and  finally  the  repeal 
of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  would  the  slave  power  now  have  been 
in  the  full  sweep  of  its  progress,  foreshadowing  its  complete  domin- 
ion through  the  moral  prostration  of  the  Supreme  Court  ?  On  the 
contrary,  would  not  the  slaveholders,  long  before  this,  have  been 
constrained  to  take  the  question  of  abolition  under  advisement? 
Sir,  instead  of  resisting,  we  have  aided  this  policy,  at  every  step  of 


INDIANA   POLITICS.  147 

its  progress,  with  the  power  in  our  own  hands  to  have  defeated  it  in 
every  struggle  that  has  yet  been  made  for  slave  ascendency.     We 
have  been  too  dastardly  to  take  our  stand.   We  have  been  false  both 
to  the  slave  and  to  ourselves.    In  1787  the  policy  of  restriction  suc- 
ceeded, because  it  was  vitalized  by  the  spirit  of  the  Revolution,  and 
went  hand  in  hand  with  measures  looking  to  the  final  abolition  of 
slavery  in  the  States.     Restriction  then  signified  destruction.    We 
must  baptize  the  people  once  more  into  this  spirit  of  liberty.     We 
must  demand  the  limitation  of  slavery,  its  national  repudiation,  as 
an  unmistakable  protest  against  its  existence  ;  as  the  forerunner  of 
other  measures,  moral  or  political,  which  shall  work  out  its  peace- 
able overthrow  ;  as  simply  an  authorized  and  appropriate  method 
of  attacking  it  in  its  strongholds,  and  never  as  its  shield  and  de- 
fense.    As  an  incipient  remedy  for  our  great  national  malady  it 
must  be  understood  as  an  essential  part  of  the  whole  process  of 
cure,  just  as  the  first  dose  of  medicine  given  to  a  sick  man  forms 
a  part  of  the  general  treatment  for  his  recovery.     As  honest  men, 
we  must  declare  this.    Our  work,  I  repeat,  as  the  friends  of  slavery 
restriction  and  slavery  extinction,  is  not  different,  but  identical ;  and 
I  insist,  therefore,  that  it  has  not  failed  hopelessly,  and  cannot  fail, 
save  through  our  own  continued  faithlessness  as  its  advocates. 

But  were  I  to  stop  here,  I  would  not  do  complete  justice  to  the 
Philadelphia  Platform.  The  men  who  made  it  came* together  with 
the  avowed  purpose  of  restoring  the  action  of  the  government  to 
the  principles  of  our  "  Republican  fathers."  They  refer  author- 
itatively to  these  principles,  in  the  resolution  from  which  I  have 
just  quoted,  and  reaffirm  the  inalienable  right  of  all  men  to  life, 
liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  as  a  self-evident  truth.  This 
was  no  unmeaning  generality.  It  was  made  necessary  by  the  open 
denial  of  it  by  the  prominent  leaders  of  the  Democratic  party  in 
both  sections  of  the  Union,  who  declare  that  white  men  only  were 
referred  to  by  our  fathers  as  having  the  inalienable  rights  which 
they  ascribe  to  "  all  men."  Bearing  these  facts  in  mind,  I  ask, 
What  were  the  principles  of  our  fathers  ?  Let  us  judge  them  bv 
their  acts,  and  their  known  opinions.  They  abolished  slavery  in 
every  rood  of  territory  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Federal  Gov- 
ernment in  the  year  1787.  They  limited  the  right  to  import  slaves 
from  abroad  to  twenty  years,  when  it  was  generally,  if  not  univer- 
sally admitted,  that  slavery  itself  would  cease.  Simultaneously 
with  the  struggle  for  independence,  or  soon  afterwards,  they  took 
measures  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  seven  of  the  old  States, 
whilst  in  the  six  remaining  they  believed  it  was  rapidly  wearing 


148  INDIANA   POLITICS. 

out  its  life  under  the  weight  of  its  acknowledged  evils.  They  had 
no  expectation  that  the  boundaries  of  the  Republic,  as  fixed  by  the 
Treaty  of  1783,  would  ever  be  enlarged,  and  therefore  could  not 
have  contemplated  the  extension  of  slavery  beyond  the  limits  it  then 
occupied.  They  would  not  allow  the  word  slave  to  defile  the  Con- 
stitution, because  they  thought  it  wrong  to  sanction  the  idea  that 
man  can  hold  property  in  man.  And  the  general  sentiment  of  the 
people  in  all  sections  of  the  country  was  in  harmony  with  the  facts 
here  stated.  Indeed,  as  I  have  already  shown,  our  fathers  were 
not  only  anti-slavery  men,  but  abolitionists,  and  we  should  so  read 
their  pedigree,  and  so  make  honorable  and  popular  a  term  that  has 
become  a  most  offensive  epithet.  I  do  not  say  they  adopted  the 
wisest  method  of  getting  rid  of  slavery,  but  they  earnestly  set  about 
it,  and  were  undoubtedly  honest  in  the  belief  that  their  method 
would  be  sufficient.  That  they  were  sadly  mistaken  makes  not 
the  slightest  difference  as  to  the  sincerity  of  their  intentions.  They 
were  in  favor  of  abolishing  slavery  in  the  States,  and  they  did  not 
propose  to  do  this  by  federal  authority  because,  with  their  views, 
it  was  not  necessary  to  entertain  that  question.  Slavery  was  to 
pass  away  by  fixing  bounds  to  its  territory,  by  cutting  off  the  for- 
eign supply,  and  by  private  emancipations,  then  rapidly  going  on 
under  the  growing  anti-slavery  sentiment  of  the  people,  quickened 
by  the  struggle  for  independence  ;  and  it  was  their  firm  belief  of 
this  that  induced  them  to  assent,  reluctantly,  and  under  an  impel- 
ling desire  for  union,  to  those  clauses  of  the  Constitution  which 
compromised,  to  some  extent,  the  freedom  of  the  colored  race.  I 
admit  such  compromise.  That  the  clauses  to  which  I  refer  on  the 
subject  of  taxation,  representation,  and  the  return  of  fugitives  from 
labor  relate  to  slavery,  is  proved  by  contemporaneous  history.  I 
do  not  quibble  about  words,  but  admit  the  fact.  And  I  am  per- 
fectly willing  that  our  fathers  shall  be  judged  in  the  light  of  con- 
temporaneous history ;  for  that  same  history  tells  us  that  the  slavery 
which  they  thus  abetted  was  the  slavery  of  the  six  States  in  which 
alone  it  remained  untouched,  and  in  which  it  was  soon  to  perish 
from  the  causes  already  mentioned ;  the  slavery  which  they  pre- 
vented by  law  from  spreading  into  the  Territories ;  the  slavery 
that  was  not  to  be  fostered  as  a  blessing,  but  only  endured  as  a 
curse,  till  it  could  make  a  decent  exit  from  the  Republic. 

Such,  my  friends,  was  the  policy  of  our  fathers.  They  did  not 
dream  of  permanently  uniting  such  antagonistic  elements  as  slavery 
and  freedom  under  the  Constitution.  They  did  not  dream  of  build- 
ing up  "  a  prison-house  and  a  palace  as  the  appropriate  wings  of  the 


INDIANA   POLITICS.  149 

temple  of  liberty."  The  battle  of  the  Revolution  was  to  be  crowned 
with  no  such  diabolical  folly.  Yielding  to  slavery  a  transient  suf- 
ferance, a  brief  hospitality,  in  the  assured  faith  that  it  would  quietly 
disappear  from  the  country,  they  precluded  themselves  by  no  word 
or  clause  in  the  Constitution  from  the  use  of  measures  for  its  extir- 
pation, should  it  treacherously  demand  perpetuity  and  bid  freedom 
serve  at  its  black  altar.  The  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States, 
interpreting  the  Constitution  by  the  help  of  contemporaneous  his- 
tory, declares  that  persons  of  African  descent  have  no  rights  under 
it  which  white  men  are  bound  to  respect.  This  monstrous  doc- 
trine, scouted  as  it  is  by  the  most  palpable  historical  facts,  is 
charged  upon  our  fathers.  But  I  accept  the  principle  of  interpre- 
tation thus  authoritatively  affirmed,  and  assert  that  the  very 
argument  which  shows  the  complicity  of  our  fathers  with  slavery 
is  their  best  vindication,  whilst  it  exonerates  their  children  from 
their  supposed  constitutional  obligations  respecting  it.  Compacts 
and  compromises  are  equally  binding  upon  both  parties  to  them. 
Slavery  has  been  false  to  the  well  understood  engagement  in  the 
faith  of  which  it  secured  a  qualified  federal  toleration  in  the  old 
States.  Perfidiously  laying  hold  of  the  concessions  generously 
made  in  its  favor  in  the  beginning,  unwilling  at  length  to  share 
even  a  divided  empire  with  freedom,  to  whom  it  has  gradually 
turned  a  deaf  ear  and  an  averted  face,  and  ruthlessly  grasping  at 
absolute  dominion,  it  has  systematically  trampled  the  Constitution 
under  its  feet.  And  are  its  champions  the  men  to  preach  to  us 
about  our  constitutional  obligations  ?  Are  we  to  compete  with 
Southern  blood-hounds  in  "  the  hunting  of  men  "  as  a  constitutional 
duty  ?  Are  we,  in  1857,  to  be  held  to  a  strict  observance  of  clauses 
confessedly  temporary  in  their  obligation,  and  which  have  long 
since  been  blotted  out  in  the  violated  faith  of  the  slaveholder  ?  I 
accept  the  argument  from  contemporaneous  history,  and  I  demand 
the  whole  argument  to  be  taken.  I  go  for  the  policy  of  our  fathers. 
Like  them,  I  am  for  the  extinction  of  slavery.  I  am  ready,  in  any 
proper  way,  to  do  what  I  am  sure  they  would  undertake  if  living, 
what  they  meant  to  do  in  their  day,  and  would  certainly  have 
accomplished,  had  they  foreseen  the  perfidy  of  the  slave  interest 
and  the  horrid  fruits  it  has  entailed  upon  the  nation.  Slavery  must 
be  abolished,  and  we  must  not  be  ashamed  to  avow  this  as  our  ulti- 
mate purpose  as  members  of  the  Republican  party.  I  see  not  how 
a  Republican  can  have  a  clear  conscience  on  any  narrower  plat- 
form, or  how  else  he  can  hope  to  be  thought  entirely  sincere.  I 
do  not  say  that  we  should  make  an  irruption  into  the  South  to 


150  INDIANA   POLITICS. 

liberate  the  millions  in  chains  by  violence.  I  do  not  say  that  we 
should  incite  them  to  revolt  against  their  tyrants.  Nor  am  I  pre- 
pared to  affirm  either  the  right  or  the  duty  of  the  National  Gov- 
ernment forthwith  to  sever  the  relation  of  master  and  slave ;  for 
the  overthrow  of  so  monstrous  a  system,  interwoven  with  the 
whole  frame-work  of  society  in  the  South  for  so  many  generations, 
however  ardently  we  may  wish  it,  or  fervently  pray  for  it,  can  only 
be  accomplished  peaceably  by  eradicating  the  sentiment  of  tyranny 
from  the  white  man's  heart,  whilst  we  smite  the  chain  from  the 
black  man's  limbs.  The  abolition  of  slavery  must  be  at  first  virtual, 
and  at  last  actual.  The  act  of  abolition  must  be  a  continuous  act. 
It  must  become  an  educational  process,  before  it  can  be  realized  in 
fact  through  any  act  of  the  government.  It  will  take  place  in 
some  States  sooner  than  in  others,  owing  to  local  and  other  causes  ; 
and  our  reliance  must  be  the  resistless  pressure  of  a  growing  anti- 
slavery  opinion,  without  which  acts  of  Congress  and  judicial  de- 
crees are  worthless.  Whilst  striving  by  the  help  of  such  an  opinion 
to  brand  slavery  as  a  political  outlaw  wherever  found  beyond  the 
States  which  it  scourges,  and  thus  to  stamp  it  with  national  repro- 
bation as  did  our  fathers,  I  would  inspire  in  the  people  of  the  free 
States  a  love  of  liberty  so  dominant  and  all-swaying,  and  a  hatred 
of  slavery  so  intense  and  unquenchable,  that  our  brethren  in  the 
South  would  desert  it  as  men  desert  a  sinking  ship.  And  to  this 
end,  as  the  Constitution  has  long  been  moulded  by  the  plastic  hand 
of  slavery  into  just  such  shape  as  would  further  its  own  behests, 
so  in  our  warfare  against  it  I  would  invoke,  just  as  fast  as  practica- 
ble, the  awakening  humanity  of  the  people  in  the  use  of  all  the 
constitutional  authority  of  the  Federal  Government,  and  of  the 
free  States,  interpreted  strictly  against  slavery  as  an  exceptional 
interest,  a  loathsome  and  wicked  anomaly,  but  liberally  in  favor  of 
freedom  as  the  source  of  our  national  life  and  the  grand  purpose 
of  our  National  Union.  "  The  system  of  the  General  Govern- 
ment," says  Jefferson,  "is  to  seize  all  doubtful  ground.  We  must 
join  in  the  scramble,  or  get  nothing.  When  first  occupancy  is  to 
give  right,  he  who  lies  still  loses  all."  In  the  name  of  the  father 
of  American  Democracy  I  plead  this  principle,  not  simply  in  behalf 
of  State  Rights  against  federal  usurpation,  but  in  behalf  of  freedom 
against  slavery.  We  must  not,  we  dare  not  slumber,  whilst  this 
sleepless  despotism  is  forging  our  chains  in  the  name  of  the  Con- 
stitution. To  accept  a  defensive  position  now  is  death.  To  medi- 
tate it  is  cowardice.  Our  attitude,  if  really  defensive,  must  be 
aggressive.     In  the  language  of  Jefferson,  "we  must  join  in  the 


INDIANA   POLITICS.  151 

scramble  or  get  nothing,"  for  "  he  who  lies  still  loses  all."  We 
must  make  of  the  Constitution  our  citadel,  our  high  tower.  We 
must  wrest  from  the  enemy  every  "  doubtful  ground,"  and  make 
it  a  bulwark  of  freedom.  In  view  of  the  priceless  value  of  liberty, 
and  of  the  subtle,  unscrupulous,  and  relentless  tyranny  with  which 
we  are  forced  to  wrestle,  we  must,  in  self-defense,  seize  every  pos- 
sible vantage-ground  afforded  by  the  Constitution,  and  resolutely 
maintain  it  as  necessary  to  our  political  salvation. 

And  cannot  all  anti-slavery  men  who  believe  in  the  use  of  the 
ballot,  notwithstanding  their  differences,  unite  in  this  struggle  ? 
The  Philadelphia  Platform,  unlike  those  adopted  at  Buffalo  and 
Pittsburg,  does  not  avow  the  doctrine  of  non-interference  by  the 
General  Government  with  slavery  in  the  States.  It  does  not  avow 
the  opposite  doctrine.  It  lays  down  a  few  clear,  comprehensive 
principles,  and  proposes  a  few  practical  measures,  made  absolutely 
necessary  by  the  state  of  the  country.  Its  framers  did  not  foresee 
exactly  the  course  of  future  events,  and  therefore  could  not  propose 
any  precise  policy  in  advance.  They  declared  themselves  in  favor 
of  "  the  union  of  the  States  and  the  rights  of  the  States,"  but  they 
gave  the  people  no  definitions,  whilst  there  was  manifestly  some- 
thing dearer  in  their  eyes  than  either  union  or  State  Rights.  They 
expressed  their  reverence  for  the  policy  of  our  fathers,  and  an- 
nounced principles  that  in  their  working  must  put  an  end  to  slavery, 
but  they  dealt  not  in  specifics  as  to  the  mode.  They  did  not  antici- 
pate the  Dred  Scott  decision,  making  slavery  no  longer  a  peculiar 
but  a  National  institution,  nor  say  that  the  time  might  not  come 
when  the  only  hope  of  destroying  it,  or  even  checking  its  ravages, 
would  be  in  smiting  it  in  the  States  with  the  weapons  so  earnestly 
commended  to  our  use  by  the  Liberty  Party.  They  knew  that 
usurpation,  long  continued,  breeds  revolt  in  a  people  determined 
to  be  free,  and  that  revolt  knows  no  law  but  necessity  for  its  action. 
Planting  themselves  upon  the  Declaration  of  Independence  as  the 
basis  of  their  policy,  they  did  not  say  precisely  how  the  enemies  of 
slavery  should  make  their  approaches  or  prosecute  their  assaults, 
whether  chiefly  through  federal  agencies,  or  the  saving  grace  of 
State  Rights  so  gloriously  illustrated  by  the  Republican  State  of 
Wisconsin ;  but  they  virtually  proclaimed  war  against  the  institu- 
tion, and  the  determination  to  rescue  the  nation  from  its  power. 
They  did  not,  in  my  judgment,  hedge  up  the  way  of  any  earnest 
foe  of  slavery  who  desires  to  oppose  it  by  political  action.  I  accept 
it,  because  I  think  I  can  stand  on  it  and  preach  from  it  the  whole 
anti-slavery  gospel.     I  accept  it,  because  it  commits  me  to  nothing 


152  INDIANA  POLITICS. 

that  I  do  not  believe.  I  accept  it,  because  it  accepts  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  and  the  policy  of  our  fathers.  I  accept  it, 
because  it  deals  in  no  negatives,  does  not  apologize  to  the  slave- 
holder, nor  cravenly  remind  him  of  any  constitutional  guarantees 
in  favor  of  his  system.  I  accept  it,  because,  as  I  understand  it,  the 
ultimate  banishment  of  American  slavery  is  deemed  by  it  necessary 
to  the  well-being  if  not  the  life  of  the  nation,  and  must  be  steadily 
prosecuted  till  it  shall  be  accomplished.  Let  us  speak  this  plainly 
in  the  ear  of  our  brethren  in  the  South.  Let  us  tell  them  that 
although  we  recognize  slavery  as  peculiarly  an  institution  of  the 
States,  we  yet  regard  it  as  the  serious  concern  of  every  man  in  the 
nation  ;  that  it  frustrates  the  design  of  our  fathers  "  to  form  a  more 
perfect  union  ;  "  makes  it  impossible  "  to  establish  justice,"  or  "  to 
secure  domestic  tranquillity  ;  "  weakens  "  the  common  defense  "  by 
inviting  foreign  attack  ;  opposes  "  the  general  welfare  "  by  its  mer- 
ciless aristocracy  in  human  flesh ;  denies  "  the  blessings  of  liberty 
to  ourselves  and  our  posterity,"  and  gives  us  the  curses  of  slavery 
instead  ;  lays  waste  the  fairest  and  most  fertile  half  of  the  Republic, 
staying  its  progress  in  population,  wealth,  power,  knowledge,  civil- 
ization, the  arts,  and  religion,  thus  weighing  down  the  whole  nation, 
and  costing  us  far  more  than  the  market  price  of  all  the  millions  in 
bonds ;  makes  the  establishment  of  free  schools  and  a  general  sys- 
tem of  education  impossible ;  brands  labor  as  dishonorable  and 
degrading ;  fills  the  ranks  of  infidelity,  and  brings  religion  itself 
into  scorn,  by  bribing  its  professors  to  espouse  its  revolting  iniquity  ; 
denounces  the  Declaration  of  Independence  as  a  self-evident  lie, 
and  deals  with  our  fathers  as  men  who  affirmed  its  self-evident 
truths  with  a  mental  reservation,  whilst  they  hypocritically  appealed 
to  the  Supreme  Judge  of  the  world  for  the  rectitude  of  their  inten- 
tions ;  and  pleads  the  cause  of  despotism  abroad  whilst  spreading 
licentiousness,  concubinage,  and  crime  where  it  rules.  Let  it  be 
distinctly  understood  that  the  slavery  of  the  Southern  States  is  thus 
necessarily  our  slavery ;  that  the  colossal  power  it  now  wields  is 
the  work,  in  part,  of  our  hands ;  that  in  so  far  as  we  made  it  the 
duty  of  unmaking  it  lies  at  our  own  doors  ;  and  that  we  will  not 
shirk  this  duty  by  admitting  any  impossible  constitutional  barrier 
in  our  way,  or  impiously  pleading  that  God  has  permitted  a  reme- 
diless evil.  Instead  of  deprecating  radical  measures,  disavowing 
"  abolitionism,"  and  fulsomely  parading  our  devotion  to  the  Union, 
let  us  declare  ourselves  the  unqualified  foes  of  slavery  in  principle, 
and  make  good  the  declaration  by  the  same  boldness  of  action  and 
uncalculating  directness  of  policy  which  make  the  politicians  of  the 


INDIANA  POLITICS.  153 

South,  in  this  respect,  our  fit  example.  Let  us  tell  them  in  point- 
blank  words  that  liberty  is  dearer  to  us  than  the  Union  ;  that  we 
value  the  Union  simply  as  the  servant  of  liberty ;  and  that  we  can 
imagine  no  earthly  perils  or  sacrifices  so  great  that  we  will  not  face 
them,  rather  than  buy  our  peace  through  the  perpetual  enslave- 
ment of  four  millions  of  people  and  their  descendants.  If  we  assure 
them  that  we  love  the  Union,  let  us  not  fail  to  inform  them  that 
we  mean  the  Union  contemplated  by  our  fathers,  with  the  chains 
of  the  slave  falling  from  his  limbs  as  the  harbinger  of  "  liberty 
throughout  all  the  land,  to  all  the  inhabitants  thereof,"  and  that 
only  by  restoring  their  policy,  and  reanimating  the  people  with  the 
spirit  of  1776,  can  these  States  be  permanently  held  together.  With 
equal  frankness  let  us  tell  them  that  we  do  not  love  the  Union  so 
dearly  prized  by  modern  Democracy,  with  James  Buchanan  as  its 
king,  and  Chief  Justice  Taney  as  its  anointed  high-priest ;  and  that 
at  whatever  cost  we  will  resist  its  atrocious  conspiracy  to  establish, 
on  the  ruins  of  the  Republic,  the  hugest  and  most  desolating  slave 
empire  that  ever  confronted  heaven  since  the  creation  of  man. 
Let  us  have  the  Christian  manhood  to  say  with  Paul,  that  we  are 
"  persuaded,  that  neither  death,  nor  life,  nor  angels,  nor  principali- 
ties, nor  powers,  nor  things  present,  nor  things  to  come,  nor  height, 
nor  depth,  nor  any  other  creature,  shall  be  able  to  separate  us  from 
the  "  life-giving  truths  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  in  the 
utmost  fullness  of  their  meaning,  and  the  perfect  length  and  breadth 
of  their  saving  power. 


THE  CAUSE  AND  CURE  OF  OUR  NATIONAL 
TROUBLES. 

IN  COMMITTEE  OF  THE  WHOLE  ON  THE  STATE  OF  THE  UNION,  JANUARY 

14,  1862. 

[The  congressional  speech,  during  the  late  war,  was  a  power  in  the  country.  It 
was  quite  as  much  the  educator  as  the  reflex  of  the  public  mind.  Very  large  editions 
of  this  speech  were  published ;  and  whoever  will  recall  the  state  of  the  country  at  the 
time,  the  extent  to  which  "  Border  State  "  policy  and  Conservatism  swayed  the  admin- 
istration, and  the  Radicalism  it  finally  accepted  as  a  necessity,  will  be  able  to  estimate 
the  value  and  timeliness  of  its  utterances.] 

Mr.  Chairman,  —  Every  thinking  man  naturally  surveys  the 
field  of  politics  from  his  own  peculiar  stand-point,  and  reaches  his 
conclusions  by  the  help  of  his  own  methods  of  thought.  Consider- 
able diversities  of  judgment  are  therefore  inevitable,  even  among 
the  disciples  of  the  same  faith,  while  uniformity  of  opinion,  however 
desirable  in  matters  essential,  is  of  far  less  consequence  than  per- 
fect freedom  of  thought.  The  discovery  and  practical  acceptance 
of  the  truth  should  be  our  grand  aim  ;  and  all  harmony  among 
men,  secured  by  the  sacrifice  of  this  aim,  is  at  once  the  sure 
prophecy  and  natural  parent  of  discord.  Since  free  thought  and 
its  free  utterance  must  be  the  condition  precedent  of  all  progress, 
it  may  be  safe  to  affirm  that  he  is  a  better  soldier  in  the  army  of 
reform  who  conscientiously  battles  even  for  false  principles,  than  he 
who  meanly  accommodates  himself  to  that  which  has  numbers  on 
its  side,  through  a  cowardly  fear  of  dissent  and  division. 

I  propose,  sir,  somewhat  in  the  spirit  of  these  observations,  to 
speak  of  the  war  in  which  our  country  is  involved.  In  the  name 
of  a  constituency  of  freemen,  I  shall  say  what  I  believe  ought  to 
be  said,  in  the  present  stage  of  our  national  troubles ;  and  I  shall 
do  so  without  favor  or  fear.  This  is  a  war  of  ideas,  not  less  than 
of  armies,  and  no  servant  of  the  Republic  should  march  with  muf- 
fled drums  against  the  foe.  So  far  as  my  own  personal  or  political 
fortunes  are  concerned,  I  shall  take  no  thought  for  the  morrow. 
This  is  no  time  for  any  public  man  to  confer  with  flesh  and  blood. 
The  fabric  of  free  government,  reared  by  our  fathers,  is  in  flames. 
In  the  opinion  of  many,  the  great  Model  Republic  of  the  world  is 


CAUSE   AND  CURE    OF    OUR  NATIONAL   TROUBLES.     155 

in  the  throes  and  spasms  of  death.  This  is  one  of  the  grand  judg- 
ment-days of  history,  and  whoever  believes  in  the  government  of 
the  world  by  a  Providence  will  interpret  this  tremendous  conflict 
as  the  voice  of  Jehovah,  calling  the  nation  to  account  for  its  sins, 
and  teaching  us,  through  the  terrible  lesson  of  civil  war,  that  "  the 
unjust  thing  shall  not  prosper."  Sir,  in  a  crisis  so  transcendently 
appalling  as  the  present,  so  grandly  solemnized  by  tokens  of  national 
retribution,  the  deepest  moral  convictions  of  every  man  should  find 
a  voice,  and  nothing  should  be  more  coveted  than  perfect  self- 
renunciation  and  singleness  of  purpose  in  the  endeavor  to  save  the 
life  of  the  government  and  the  liberty  of  the  people. 

Mr.  Chairman,  the  cause  of  this  gigantic  conspiracy  against  the 
Constitution  and  laws  is  the  topic  which  meets  us  at  the  very 
threshold  of  any  intelligent  thought  or  action  on  our  part.  What 
produced  this  infernal  attempt  upon  the  nation's  life  ?  What  is  it 
that  has  called  into  deadly  conflict,  from  the  walks  of  peace,  more 
than  a  million  of  men,  brethren  and  kindred,  and  the  joint  heirs  of 
a  common  heritage  of  liberty  ?  What  power  is  it  that  has  run 
through  the  entire  gamut  of  ordinary  villainies,  and  at  last  turned 
national  assassin  ?  These  questions  demand  an  answer.  Shall  we 
postpone  it,  as  some  of  our  loyal  men  advise  us,  till  peace  shall  be 
restored,  and  the  Union  reestablished  ?  Sir,  this  would  be  to 
affront  common  sense,  and  surrender  our  mightiest  weapons  to  the 
rebels.  The  solemn  issue  of  national  life  or  death  must  be  disposed 
of  upon  its  merits,  and  we  should  bring  ourselves  face  to  face  with 
it,  and  with  every  question  fairly  connecting  itself  with  the  great 
controversy.  If  we  expect  the  favor  of  God  we  must  lay  hold  of 
the  conscience  of  our  quarrel,  instead  of  keeping  it  out  of  sight. 
The  revolutionary  struggle  of  our  fathers  was  preceded  by  the  most 
exhaustive  discussion  of  the  causes  which  produced  it,  and  which 
"  a  decent  respect  for  the  opinions  of  mankind  "  required  them  "  to 
declare."  They  based  their  justification  before  the  world  upon 
great  primal  truths,  which  they  declared  to  be  self-evident,  and 
they  appealed  to  the  Supreme  Judge  of  the  world  for  the  rectitude 
of  their  intentions.  Thus  only  could  they  have  conquered.  There 
was  no  vital  question  which  they  sought  to  ignore  or  postpone.  So 
should  it  be  with  us  to-day.  Stern  work  has  to  be  done,  and  our 
appeal  must  be  to  the  enlightened  judgment  and  roused  moral  sense 
of  the  people.  The  cause  and  the  cure  of  our  troubles  are  insepa- 
rably connected.  This  rebellion  is  not  a  stupendous  accident.  It 
is  not  an  eccentric  growth,  disowning  the  ordinary  law  of  cause  and 
effect ;  and  we  must  not  "  cut  the  thread  of  history  from  behind 


156     CAUSE   AND   CURE    OF   OUR   NATIONAL   TROUBLES. 

it,"  either  to  accommodate  traitors  or  timid  loyal  men.  It  has  not 
burst  into  life  without  any  known  parentage,  but  is  the  legitimate 
child  of  the  foul  ancestry  from  which  it  has  sprung.  It  has  a  dis- 
coverable genesis,  and  the  time  has  come  to  explore  it. 

It  is  argued,  in  very  respectable  quarters,  that  the  slavery  ques- 
tion has  nothing  to  do  with  our  present  troubles.  This  rebellion, 
we  are  told,  is  the  crowning  fruit  of  the  heresy  of  State  Rights,  as 
expounded  by  some  of  the  leading  statesmen  of  our  country,  and 
the  issue  involved,  therefore,  is  simply  the  old  one  between  the 
Federal  and  Democratic  parties.  Sir,  I  hope  we  shall  not  be  mis- 
led by  this  fallacy.  I  trust  our  detestation  of  this  rebellion,  and 
of  the  dogma  on  which  it  assumes  to  be  based,  will  not  drive  us 
into  a  false  position.  I  think  there  are  such  things  as  State  Rights, 
notwithstanding  the  efforts  of  rebels  to  make  them  a  cloak  for  trea- 
son.  I  believe  there  is  such  a  principle  as  State  Sovereignty, 
recognized,  while  limited,  by  the  Federal  Constitution  itself.  On 
this  question  I  subscribe,  in  the  main,  to  the  teachings  of  James 
Madison,  and  with  him  I  decline  the  consequences  which  slave- 
holding  nullifiers  have  sought  to  deduce  from  his  constitutional 
opinions.  And,  heartily  as  I  condemn  and  denounce  the  dogma 
of  secession,  I  believe  it  to  be  no  more  pernicious  than  that  other 
heresy  which  has  steadily  aimed  to  swallow  up  the  States,  and  all 
the  departments  of  the  government,  in  the  vortex  of  one  central- 
ized federal  power.  Sir,  no  warnings  of  inspired  or  uninspired 
man  were  ever  more  completely  justified  by  time  than  the  warn- 
ings of  Thomas  Jefferson  against  federal  usurpation ;  and  the 
principles  declared  in  the  case  of  Dred  Scott,  if  practically  recog- 
nized and  accepted,  would  as  perfectly  accomplish  the  overthrow 
of  the  government  of  our  fathers  as  it  would  be  possible  to  do  by 
the  most  extravagant  theorv  of  the  right  of  individual  States  to 
secede  from  the  Union. 

It  was  not  jealousy  of  the  federal  power  that  prompted  the  cot- 
ton States  to  secede,  but  their  inability  longer  to  rule  the  National 
Government  in  the  interest  of  slavery.  It  was  not  jealousy  of  the 
aggressions  of  the  State  governments  that  gave  birth  to  the  Dred 
Scott  decision,  but  the  influence  of  that  same  slave  power,  sitting  like 
a  throned  monarch  on  the  supreme  bench,  in  perverting  the  powers 
of  the  government.  Whether  the  Constitution  has  been  made  to 
dip  towards  centralization  or  State  Rights,  the  disturbing  element 
has  uniformly  been  slavery.  This  is  the  unclean  spirit  that  from 
the  beginning  has  needed  exorcism.  Without  it  there  were  not 
defects  enough  in  the  system  of  government  which  our  fathers  left 


CAUSE  AND  CURE  OF  OUR  NATIONAL  TROUBLES.  157 

us  to  endanger  its  success,  or  seriously  to  disturb  its  equilibrium. 
To  charge  this  rebellion  upon  secession,  and  not  slavery,  is  like 
charging  the  domination  of  slavery  itself  upon  the  invention  of  the 
cotton-gin.  Without  the  previous  existence  of  slavery  in  the 
Southern  States,  cotton  would  not  have  been  king.  Instead  of  one 
all-engrossing  pursuit,  there  would  have  been  a  healthy  variety  of 
enterprises,  multiplied  objects  of  interest,  all  conducted  by  educated 
labor,  and  stimulated  by  remuneration  and  the  influence  of  compe- 
tition. Slavery  founded  the  kingdom  of  cotton,  and  secured  its 
present  ascendency  under  the  motive  power  of  fresh  lands  and  new 
labor-saving  machinery,  which  it  employed  as  the  occasion  for  put- 
ting forth  new  life  ;  and  slavery  is  now  seeking  to  found  an  empire 
of  rebel  sovereignties,  in  the  name  of  State  Rights,  which  it  uses  as 
the  convenient  but  perverted  instrument  of  its  purpose. 

Mr.  Chairman,  when  I  say  that  this  rebellion  has  its  source  and 
life  in  slavery,  I  only  repeat  a  simple  truism.  No  fact  is  better 
understood  throughout  the  country,  both  by  loyal  and  disloyal  men. 
It  is  accepted  by  the  people  as  if  it  were  an  intuition.  And  the 
germ  of  our  troubles,  it  must  be  confessed,  is  in  the  Constitution 
itself.  These  may  seem  ungracious  words,  and  will  certainly  win 
no  applause ;  but  it  is  best  to  face  the  truth,  however  unwelcome, 
and,  if  possible,  profit  by  its  lesson.  I  think  it  was  Granville  Sharpe 
who  said  that  "  God,  in  founding  the  universe,  made  it  certain  that 
every  bargain  with  the  devil  should  weaken  the  man  who  makes 
it."  Sir,  had  our  fathers,  in  the  beginning,  seen  this  truth  in  the 
light  of  the  terrible  facts  which  bear  witness  to  it  to-day,  this  horrid 
legacy  of  civil  war  would  not  have  been  entailed  upon  their  chil- 
dren. On  this  subject  I  am  not  without  very  high  authority,  and 
I  prefer  to  quote  it :  — 

"  In  the  Articles  of  Confederation  there  was  no  guarantee  for  the 
property  of  the  slaveholder ;  no  double  representation  of  him  in  the 
federal  councils ;  no  power  of  taxation  ;  no  stipulation  for  the  re- 
covery of  fugitive  slaves.  But  when  the  powers  of  government 
came  to  be  delegated  to  the  Union,  the  South  —  that  is,  South 
Carolina  and  Georgia  —  refused  their  subscription  to  the  parch- 
ment till  it  should  be  saturated  with  the  infection  of  slavery,  which 
no  fumigation  could  purify,  no  quarantine  could  extinguish.  The 
freemen  of  the  North  gave  way,  and  the  deadly  venom  of  slavery 
was  infused  into  the  Constitution  of  freedom." 

So  said  John  Quincy  Adams,  and  he  pronounced  the  bargain 
thus  made  by  our  fathers  "  morally  and  politically  vicious."  This 
bargain  is  the  fountain  of  all  our  disasters.     South  Carolina  and 


158     CAUSE   AND   CURE   OF   OUR  NATIONAL   TROUBLES. 

Georgia  loved  slavery  better  than  they  loved  the  Union,  and  hence 
our  Union  with  them  has  proved  ill-matched,  unnatural,  and 
calamitous.  The  Constitution  received  its  life  in  concessions 
which  slavery  demanded  as  conditions  of  union,  and  slavery, 
from  that  moment,  has  assumed  to  deal  with  the  Constitution  as  its 
master.  The  rebels  to-day  in  arms  against  the  government  are 
the  fit  representatives  of  the  rebels  whom  our  fathers  sought  in 
vain  to  make  loyal  by  concessions  in  the  beginning. 

I  do  not  say  that  the  founders  of  our  government  are  to  be 
judged  in  the  light  of  the  terrible  evils  which  have  been  the  off- 
spring of  their  mistake.  We  must  view  their  action  from  their 
own  point  of  vision,  taking  into  the  account  their  known  opinions, 
wishes,  and  expectations.  They  regarded  slavery  with  abhor- 
rence. They  would  not  allow  the  word  slave,  slavery,  or  even 
servitude,  to  be  named  in  the  Constitution.  They  believed  the 
evil  to  be  in  the  course  of  speedy  decay  and  death.  They  forbade 
its  introduction  into  all  territory  under  national  control.  They 
took  measures  to  cut  off  the  foreign  supply,  the  great  artery  of  its 
life.  Private  emancipations  were  rapidly  going  on  in  all  the  States, 
under  the  influence  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  the 
struggle  for  their  own  liberty.  The  concessions  which  they  made, 
so  emphatically  condemned  by  Mr.  Adams,  must  be  interpreted  by 
these  facts  of  history,  which  must  ever  vindicate  their  good  inten- 
tions, and  separate  them  from  the  compromisers  of  a  later  day. 
They  thought  they  were  simply  yielding  to  slavery  a  transient 
sufferance,  a  brief  hospitality,  so  that  it  might  die  and  pass  away 
"  decently  and  in  order ; "  and  they  did  not  dream  that  the  evil 
thus  abetted  would  treacherously  demand  perpetuity,  and  bid  free- 
dom serve  at  its  black  altar.  It  is  not  possible  to  believe  that  their 
bargain  with  slavery  would  ever  have  been  made,  had  they  fore- 
seen the  curses  it  has  entailed  upon  the  nation.  Perfidiously  laying 
hold  of  concessions  generously  made  in  its  favor  in  the  beginning, 
and  too  liberally  repeated  afterwards,  and  unwilling  at  length  to 
share  even  a  divided  empire  with  freedom,  to  whom  it  has  turned 
a  deaf  ear  and  an  averted  face,  it  has  systematically  trampled  the 
Constitution  under  its  feet  in  its  ruthless  march  towards  absolute 
dominion  over  these  States.  The  first  fatal  concession  to  this  rebel 
power  prepared  the  way  for  a  second,  and  the  history  of  its  rela- 
tions to  the  government  is  a  history  of  persistent  but  unavailing 
endeavors  to  placate  its  spirit,  and  make  it  possible  for  the  nation 
to  live  with  it  in  peace. 

We  gave  it  three  large  States,  carved  out  of  the  Territory  of 


CAUSE   AND   CURE   OF   OUR  NATIONAL  TROUBLES.    159 

Louisiana.  The  purchase  of  Florida  was  in  obedience  to  its  de- 
mands, and  so  was  the  prosecution  of  the  Seminole  and  Florida 
wars.  We  assisted  in  expelling  the  red  man  from  seven  or  eight 
States  of  the  South,  and  forcing  him  into  slavery,  at  the  cost  of 
many  millions  to  the  government,  so  that  the  white  man  could 
enter  with  his  peculiar  institution  where  otherwise  it  was  forbidden. 
In  order  to  "  save  the  Union  "  and  propitiate  men  who  subordinated 
it  to  negro  slavery,  we  abandoned  the  early  policy  of  the  fathers  in 
1820.  In  the  same  spirit  we  consented  to  add  an  empire  to  slavery 
in  the  Southwest,  in  the  annexation  of  Texas.  We  united  in  the 
prosecution  of  the  Mexican  War,  well  knowing  that  the  extension 
of  slavery  was  its  object.  Under  the  threat  of  disunion  in  1850, 
we  abandoned  the  Wilmot  Proviso,  and  entered  into  a  covenant 
that  the  Territories  of  Utah  and  New  Mexico  should  be  received 
into  the  Union,  with  or  without  slavery  as  their  people  might  de- 
termine ;  thus  tempting  the  South  to  apply  this  principle,  which 
was  done  in  1854,  to  the  territory  saved  by  the  Missouri  restric- 
tion ;  and  by  way  of  good  measure  we  furnished  our  rebel  brethren 
with  a  fugitive  slave  act,  which  they  had  not  seriously  demanded 
as  a  condition  of  their  loyalty.  The  Missouri  Compromise,  made 
to  pacify  slavery,  was  overthrown  at  its  bidding,  by  the  help  of 
Northern  votes,  while  the  Dred  Scott  decision  was  the  work,  in 
part,  of  Northern  judges.  Our  hatred  of  the  negro  has  cropped 
out  in  black  codes  in  the  free  States  which  rival  in  villainy  the 
worst  features  of  the  slave  laws  of  the  South.  We  have  allowed 
slavery  to  expurgate  our  literature  and  mutilate  the  school-books 
of  our  children,  while  even  the  grand  instrumentalities  of  the 
Church  —  its  Tract  and  Bible  and  Missionary  and  Sunday-school 
associations  —  have  submitted  to  its  unhallowed  surveillance.  We 
have  consented  to  the  suspension  of  the  Constitution  in  the  free 
States,  through  the  Fugitive  Slave  Act  of  1850,  so  far  as  the  rights 
of  trial  by  jury  and  habeas  corpus  are  concerned;  and  in  the  slave 
States,  so  far  as  the  rights  of  locomotion  and  free  speech  relate  to 
our  own  citizens,  whom  we  meekly  permit  to  be  driven  out  by 
mobs,  tarred  and  feathered,  or  hung  like  criminals,  without  cause. 
We  have  permitted  both  Houses  of  Congress,  the  Executive  and 
Judicial  Departments  of  the  government,  the  Army  and  Navy, 
and  our  Foreign  Diplomacy,  to  be  controlled  by  this  rebel  interest, 
with  the  power  all  the  while  in  our  own  hands  to  have  done  other- 
wise. Sir,  it  has  ruled  the  Republic  from  the  beginning.  To  pet 
and  please  it  seems  to  have  been  the  work  of  our  lives,  and  upon 
its  rebel  altar  our  public  men,  through  long  years  of  devil-worship, 
have  offered  their  sacrifices. 


160     CAUSE   AND   CURE   OF   OUR  NATIONAL  TROUBLES. 

Nor  has  the  Republican  party,  Mr.  Chairman,  been  wanting  in 
tokens  of  forbearance  towards  the  slave  interest.  While  emphat- 
ically avowing  an  anti-slavery  policy,  to  a  certain  extent,  it  has  been 
still  more  emphatic  in  disavowing  any  purpose  to  go  beyond  its  self- 
imposed  limits.  Nothing  could  exceed  the  persistency,  emphasis, 
and  fervor  with  which  its  editors,  orators,  and  leaders  have  dis- 
owned the  intention  to  interfere  with  slavery  in  the  States  of  the 
South.  They  have  protested,  perpetually,  and  with  uplifted  hands, 
against  "  abolitionism,"  as  if  slavery  had  the  stamp  of  divinity  upon 
its  brow.  Denials,  disclaimers,  deprecations,  virtual  apologies  to 
slavery,  have  been  the  order  of  the  day  with  very  many  of  our 
leaders  ;  and  so  perfectly  have  we  understood  the  art  of  prophesy- 
ing smooth  things,  that  multitudes  have  joined  our  organization,  less 
through  its  known  anti-slavery  purpose,  than  the  disavowal  of  any 
such  purpose  by  those  who  have  assumed  to  speak  in  its  name. 
Great  forbearance,  moderation,  and  a  studious  deference  to  the 
constitutional  rights  of  slavery,  have  uniformly  marked  the  policy 
of  the  Republican  party,  and  would  have  prevented  this  rebellion, 
had  it  been  possible  through  the  spirit  of  conciliation.  Its  chosen 
President  is  a  cool,  cautious  politician,  of  conservative  antecedents 
and  most  kindly  disposition.  No  fact  was  better  known  to  the 
leaders  of  this  rebellion  than  that  their  constitutional  rights  were 
perfectly  safe  in  his  hands.  He  so  assured  them,  solemnly,  in  his 
inaugural  address.  He  declared  himself  in  favor  of  enforcing  the 
Fugitive  Slave  Act.  He  expressed  his  willingness  to  see  the  Con- 
stitution so  amended  as  to  tie  up  the  hands  of  the  people,  forever, 
against  the  right  to  interfere  with  slavery  in  the  States  of  the 
South ;  and  this  proposition  to  incorporate  the  Lecompton  Consti- 
tution into  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  was  adopted  by 
both  Houses  of  Congress,  and  submitted  to  them  by  the  Peace 
Congress  of  last  winter,  inaugurated  under  Republican  auspices, 
for  the  purpose  of  settling  our  national  troubles  without  a  resort  to 
war.  When  all  these  friendly  overtures  were  defiantly  spurned 
by  the  rebels,  the  President  still  clung  to  the  hope  of  rescuing  them 
from  their  madness.  He  still  thought  it  his  duty  to  strive  with 
them,  through  much  forbearance,  patient  waiting,  cautious  diplo- 
macy, and  fatherly  solicitude.  So  systematically  did  he  seem  to  go 
down  into  the  Valley  of  Humiliation,  that  some  of  his  own  party 
friends,  yielding  to  their  impatience,  pronounced  the  first  six  weeks 
of  his  administration  simply  a  continuation  of  the  policy  of  his  pre- 
decessor. Every  conceivable  expedient  was  resorted  to  to  preserve 
the  public  peace,  and  with  such  ingenuity  and  steadfastness  did  the 


CAUSE  AND   CURE   OF   OUR  NATIONAL  TROUBLES.     161 

Executive  pursue  his  policy  in  this  direction,  that  the  rebels  were 
at  last  obliged  to  fire  upon  Fort  Sumter  for  no  better  reason  than 
the  sending  of  provisions  to  prevent  our  garrison  from  starva- 
tion, which  he  kindly  assured  them  was  the  sole  purpose  of  the  ex- 
pedition. 

Sir,  this  rebellion  is  a  bloody  and  frightful  demonstration  of  the 
fact  that  slavery  and  freedom  cannot  dwell  together  in  peace.  The 
experiment  has  been  tried,  thoroughly,  perseveringly,  and  with  a 
patience  which  defied  despair,  and  has  culminated  in  civil  war.  We 
have  pursued  the  spirit  of  conciliation  to  the  very  gates  of  death, 
and  yet  the  "irrepressible  conflict"  is  upon  us,  and  must  work  out 
its  needed  lesson.  I  do  not  refer  to  our  uniform  forbearance 
toward  slavery  as  a  virtue.  On  the  contrary,  this  has  only  mad- 
dened and  emboldened  its  spirit,  and  hastened  an  event  which  was 
simply  a  question  of  time.  We,  in  the  free  States,  are  not  wholly 
guiltless,  but  I  charge  to  the  account  of  slavery  that  very  timidity 
and  lack  of  manhood  in  the  North  through  which  it  has  managed 
to  rule  the  nation.  It  has  prepared  itself  for  its  work  of  treason, 
by  feeding  upon  the  virtue  of  our  public  men  and  demoralizing  the 
spirit  of  our  people.  As  an  argument  against  slavery,  this  rebel- 
lion is  absolutely  overwhelming.  Nothing  could  possibly  add  to 
its  irresistible  force.  Other  arguments,  however  convincing  to 
men  of  reflection,  have  not  thus  far  been  able  to  rouse  the  mass  of 
our  people  to  any  very  earnest  opposition  to  slavery  upon  principle  ; 
but  this  argument  must  prevail  with  every  man  who  is  not  a  rebeh 
at  heart.  This  black  conspiracy  against  the  life  of  the  Republic,, 
which  has  armed  half  a  million  of  men  in  its  work  of  treason, 
piracy,  and  murder,  —  this  magnificent  spectacle  of  total  depravity 
made  easy  in  real  life,  is  the  crowning  flower  and  fruit  of  our  part- 
nership with  the  "sum  of  all  villainies."  All  the  crimes  and  hor- 
rors of  this  struggle  for  national  existence  cry  out  against  it,  and 
demand  its  utter  political  damnation.  In  the  fires  of  the  revolution 
which  it  has  kindled,  it  has  painted  its  own  character  with  a  pencil 
dipped  in  hell.  The  lives  sacrificed  in  the  war  it  has  waged,  the 
agonies  of  the  battle-field,  the  bodies  and  limbs  mangled  and  maimed 
for  life,  the  widows  and  orphans  made  to  mourn,  the  moral  ravages 
of  war,  the  waste  of  property,  the  burning  of  bridges,  the  robbery 
of  forts,  arsenals,  navy-yards,  and  mints,  the  public  sanction  and 
practice  of  piracy,  and  the  imminent  peril  to  which  the  cause  of 
free  government  throughout  the  world  is  subjected,  all  write  their 
deep  brand  upon  slavery  as  a  Christless  outlaw,  and  plead  with  us 
to  smite  it  in  the  name  of  God. 
11 


162    CAUSE   AND   CURE   OF   OUR  NATIONAL  TROUBLES. 

Can  I  be  mistaken,  Mr.  Chairman,  in  holding  slavery  to  this 
fearful  reckoning?  If  so,  why  has  there  been  no  rebellion  in  any 
non-slaveholding  State  ?  Why  is  it,  that  in  the  great  centres  of 
slavery  treason  is  most  rampant,  while,  as  we  recede  into  regions 
in  which  the  slaves  are  few  and  scattered,  as  in  Western  Virginia, 
Delaware,  and  other  border  States,  we  find  the  people  loyally  dis- 
posed toward  the  Union  ?  These  facts  admit  of  but  one  explana- 
tion. Kindred  to  them  is  the  known  character  of  the  men  who 
are  conducting  this  rebellion.  They  tell  us,  as  Vice  President 
Stephens  has  done,  that  slavery  is  to  be  the  corner-stone  of  the 
Southern  Confederacy.  Its  leaders  and  their  associates  denounce 
Jefferson  as  a  sophist,  and  the  Declaration  of  Independence  as 
"  Red-Republican  doctrine."  They  speak  of  the  laboring  millions 
of  the  free  States  as  the  "  mud-sills  of  society,"  as  a  "  pauper  ban- 
ditti," as  "greasy  mechanics  and  filthy  operatives."  They  declare 
that  "  slavery,  black  or  white,  is  right  and  necessary  ;  "  and  this  doc- 
trine has  been  advocated  by  the  Southern  pulpit,  and  by  the  lead- 
ing newspapers  of  Charleston,  Richmond,  and  New  Orleans.  They 
believe  with  Calhoun,  that  slavery  is  "  the  most  safe  and  stable 
basis  for  free  institutions  in  the  world."  They  agree  with  Gov- 
ernor Hammond,  that  "  slavery  supersedes  the  necessity  of  an  or- 
der of  nobility,  and  the  other  appendages  of  a  hereditary  system  of 
government."  They  teach  that  "  capital  should  own  labor,"  and 
that  "  some  men  are  born  with  saddles  on  their  backs,  and  others 
booted  and  spurred  to  ride  them  by  the  grace  of  God."  In  the 
language  of  a  distinguished  rebel  Senator,  they  "  would  spread  the 
blessings  of  slavery,  like  the  religion  of  our  Divine  Master,  to  the 
uttermost  ends  of  the  earth."  By  these  atrocious  sentiments  they 
are  animated  in  their  revolt  against  the  government.  Sir,  does 
any  man  doubt  that,  should  the  rebels  triumph  over  us,  they  will 
establish  slavery  in  every  free  State  ?  Was  not  the  immediate 
cause  of  the  revolt  their  inability  to  diffuse  this  curse  under  the 
Constitution?  They  do  not  disguise  the  fact  that  they  are  fight- 
ing for  slavery.  They  tender  us  that  special  issue,  and  have  staked 
the  existence  of  their  Idol  upon  the  success  of  their  arms  against 
us.  If  we  meet  them  at  all,  we  necessarily  meet  them  on  the 
issue  they  tender.  If  we  fight  at  all,  we  must  fight  slavery  as  the 
grand  rebel. 

Do  you  tell  me  that  the  question  involved  in  this  war  is  simply 
one  of  Government  or  No  Government  ?  I  admit  it ;  but  I  say 
the  previous  question  is  slavery  or  freedom  ;  or  rather,  it  is  the 
same  question,  stated  in  different  words.     Slavery  and  treason,  in 


CAUSE  AND  CURE   OF   OUR  NATIONAL  TROUBLES.    163 

this  struggle,  are  identical.  It  is  slavery  which  to-day  has  the  gov- 
ernment by  the  throat,  and  thus  thrusts  upon  us  the  issue  of  its  life 
or  death.  Do  you  say  that  the  preservation  of  the  Union  must  be 
kept  in  view  as  the  grand  purpose  of  the  war  on  our  part  ?  I  ad- 
mit it ;  but  I  say  that  nothing  but  slavery  has  brought  the  Union 
into  peril.  Its  whole  career,  as  I  have  shown,  has  been  a  perpet- 
ual conspiracy  against  the  Constitution,  crowned  at  last  by  a  deadly 
stab  at  its  life.  Am  I  told  that  this  is  a  war  for  the  life  and  lib- 
erty of  a  nation  belonging  chiefly  to  the  white  race,  and  not  a 
war  for  the  emancipation  of  black  men  ?  I  frankly  agree  to  it ; 
but  I  insist  that  our  national  life  and  liberty  can  only  be  saved  by 
giving  freedom  to  all,  and  that  all  loyal  men,  therefore,  should 
favor  emancipation.  Shall  the  nation  be  sacrificed  rather  than 
break  the  chains  of  the  slave  ?  Shall  we  madly  attempt  to  carry 
on  the  war  as  if  slavery  had  no  existence  ?  Shall  we  delude  our- 
selves by  mere  phrases,  and  pretend  ignorance  of  what  every  one 
knows  and  feels  to  be  veritable  truth  ?  Shall  we  prosecute  this 
war  on  false  pretenses  ?  Shall  we  even  shrink  from  the  discussion 
of  slavery,  or  talk  about  it  in  circumlocutions,  lest  we  give  offense 
to  rebels  and  their  sympathizers  ? 

I  know  it  was  not  the  purpose  of  this  administration,  at  first,  to 
abolish  slavery,  but  only  to  save  the  Union,  and  maintain  the  old 
order  of  things.  Neither  was  it  the  purpose  of  our  fathers,  in  the 
beginning  of  the  Revolution,  to  insist  on  independence.  Before 
the  first  battles  were  fought,  a  reconciliation  could  have  been 
secured  simply  by  removing  the  grievance  which  led  to  arms.  But 
events  soon  prepared  the  people  to  demand  absolute  separation. 
Similar  facts  may  tell  the  story  of  the  present  struggle.  In  its  be- 
ginning, neither  the  administration  nor  the  people  foresaw  its  mag- 
nitude, nor  the  extraordinary  means  it  would  employ  in  prosecut- 
ing its  designs.  The  crisis  has  assumed  new  features  as  the  war 
has  progressed.  The  policy  of  emancipation  has  been  born  of  the 
circumstances  of  the  rebellion,  which  every  hour  more  and  more 
plead  for  it.  "  Time  makes  more  converts  than  reason."  I  believe 
the  popular  demand  now  is,  or  soon  will  be,  the  total  extirpation  of 
slavery  as  the  righteous  purpose  of  the  war,  and  the  only  means  of 
a  lasting  peace.  We  should  not  agree,  if  it  were  proposed,  to  re- 
store slavery  to  its  ancient  rights  under  the  Constitution,  and  allow 
it  a  new  cycle  of  rebellion  and  crime. 

The  rebels  have  demanded  a  "  reconstruction  "  on  the  basis  of 
slavery  ;  let  us  give  them  a  "  reconstruction  "  on  the  basis  of  free- 
dom.    Let  us  convert  the  rebel  States  into  conquered  provinces, 


164     CAUSE   AND   CURE    OF    OUR  NATIONAL   TROUBLES. 

remanding  them  to  the  status  of  mere  Territories,  and  governing 
them  as  such  in  our  discretion.  Under  no  circumstances  should  we 
consent  to  end  this  struo-D-le  on  terms  that  would  leave  us  where 

Co 

we  hegan  it.  To  conclude  the  war  by  restoring  slavery  to  the 
constitutional  rights  it  has  forfeited  by  treason,  would  be"  as  unrea- 
sonable as  putting  out  the  fire,  and  turning  loose  the  incendiary 
with  torch  in  hand.  It  would  be  like  reinstating  the  devil  in  Par- 
adise, to  reenact  his  rebellion  against  the  Most  High.  Sir,  let  us 
see  to  it,  that  out  of  this  war  shall  come  a  permanent  peace  to  these 
States.  Let  us  demand  "  indemnity  for  the  past,  and  security  for 
the  future."  The  mere  suppression  of  the  rebellion  will  be  an 
empty  mockery  of  our  sufferings  and  sacrifices,  if  slavery  shall  be 
spared  to  canker  the  heart  of  the  nation  anew,  and  repeat  its  dia- 
bolical deeds.  No,  Sir.  The  old  dispensation  is  past.  It  served 
us  as  a  schoolmaster,  to  bring  us  into  a  new  and  higher  one,  and 
we  are  now  done  with  it  forever.  We  determined,  in  1860,  that  the 
domination  of  slavery  should  come  to  an  end.  The  government 
had  long  been  drifting  into  its  vortex,  but  we  resolved,  at  whatever 
cost,  to  rescue  it.  Had  we  been  satisfied  with  the  rule  of  slavery, 
as  it  existed  prior  to  the  rebellion,  we  might  have  had  peace  to-day. 
We  might  have  agreed  to  the  election  of  Breckinridge.  We 
might  have  avoided  war,  even  after  the  election  of  Mr.  Lincoln, 
by  calling  into  his  Cabinet  the  chief  rebel  conspirators,  who  would 
have  been  pacified  by  the  spoils,  while  serving  the  behests  of  slav- 
ery. Having  chosen  a  different  course  by  the  election  of  a  man 
committed  to  a  specific  anti-slavery  policy,  and  having  undertaken 
to  execute  that  policy  against  all  opposition,  we  are  now  shut  up  to 
the  single  duty  of  crushing  the  rebellion  at  all  hazards,  and  blast- 
ing, forever,  the  power  that  has  called  it  into  life. 

Mr.  Chairman,  our  poiver  to  destroy  slavery  now,  I  believe,  is 
not  questioned.  The  law  of  nations  applicable  to  a  state  of  war 
takes  from  this  rebel  power  every  constitutional  refuge  it  could 
claim  in  a  time  of  peace.  The  principle  is  thus  declared  by  the 
illustrious  statesman  whose  authority  I  have  already  quoted  re- 
specting another  topic  :  — 

"  I  lay  this  down  as  the  law  of  nations.  I  say  that  the  military  author- 
ity takes,  for  the  time,  the  place  of  all  municipal  institutions,  slavery  among 
the  rest.  Under  that  state  of  things,  so  far  from  its  being  true  that  the  States 
where  slavery  exists  have  the  exclusive  management  of  the  subject,  not  only 
the  President  of  the  United  States,  but  the  Commander  of  the  army,  has  power 
to  order  the  universal  emancipation  of  the  slaves." 

And  again :  — 


CAUSE  AND  CURE  OF  OUR  NATIONAL  TROUBLES.  165 

"  From  the  instant  that  your  slaveholding  States  become  the  theatre  of  war, 
civil,  servile,  or  foreign,  from  that  instant  the  war  powers  of  Congress  extend 
to  interference  with  the  institution  of  slavery,  in  every  way  in  which  it  can  be 
interfered  with,  from  a  claim  of  indemnity  for  slaves  taken  or  destroyed,  to  the 
cession  of  a  State  burdened  with  slavery  to  a  foreign  power." 

This,  Sir,  is  the  grand  weapon  which  the  rebels  have  placed  in 
our  hands,  and  we  should  use  it  as  a  matter  of  clear  and  unhesitat- 
ing duty.  Not  that  the  Constitution  is  so  absolutely  perfect,  or  so 
entirely  sacred,  that  we  can  in  no  event  disregard  it.  The  nation 
is  greater  than  the  Constitution,  because  it  made  the  Constitution. 
We  had  a  country  before  we  had  a  Constitution,  and  at  all  hazards 
we  must  save  it.  The  Constitution  was  made  for  the  people,  not  the 
people  for  the  Constitution.  Cases  may  arise  in  which  patriotism  it- 
self may  demand  that  we  trample  under  our  feet  some  of  the  most 
vital  principles  of  the  Constitution,  under  the  exigencies  of  war. 

"  Man  is  more  than  constitutions  ;  better  rot  beneath  the  sod, 
Than  be  true  to  Church  and  State,  while  we  are  doubly  false  to  God." 

But  so  far  as  emancipation  is  concerned,  constitutional  difficul- 
ties, if  any  existed,  are  no  longer  in  the  way,  since  the  Constitution 
itself  recognizes  the  war  power  of  the  government,  which  the 
rebels  have  compelled  us  to  employ  against  them.  They'  have 
sown  the  wind,  now  let  them  reap  the  whirlwind.  We  have  leave 
to  do  what  the  great  body  of  the  people  have  hitherto  excused 
themselves  from  doing,  on  the  ground  of  impassable  constitutional 
barriers,  and  our  failure  to  act  will  be  as  criminal  as  the  blessings 
of  universal  freedom  would  be  priceless.  "  Man's  liberty  is  God's 
opportunity."  Not  for  all  the  wealth  or  honors  of  the  universe 
should  we  now  withhold  our  suffrage  from  the  proposition  to  "  pro- 
claim liberty  throughout  all  the  land,  to  all  the  inhabitants  thereof." 
Never,  perhaps,  in  the  history  of  any  nation  has  so  grand  an  occa- 
sion presented  itself  for  serving  the  interests  of  humanity  and  free- 
dom. And  our  responsibility,  commensurate  with  our  power,  can- 
not be  evaded.  As  we  are  freed  from  all  antecedent  obligations, 
we  should  deal  with  this  remorseless  oligarchy  as  if  we  were  now 
at  the  beginning  of  the  nation's  life,  and  about  to  lay  the  founda- 
tions of  empire  in  these  States  for  ages  to  come.  Our  failure  to 
give  freedom  to  four  millions  of  slaves  would  be  a  crime  only  to  be 
measured  by  that  of  putting  them  in  chains  if  they  were  free.  If 
we  could  fully  grasp  this  idea,  our  duty  would  become  at  once 
plain  and  imperative.  We  want  not  simply  the  military  power  to 
crush  the  rebellion,  but  the  statesmanship  that  shall  comprehend 
the  crisis,  and  coin  this  "  golden  moment "  into  jewels  of  liberty 
and  peace,  for  the  future  glory  of  the  Republic. 


166     CAUSE   AND   CURE   OF   OUR  NATIONAL   TROUBLES. 

Slavery,  as  I  have  already  shown,  has  TDeen  the  evil  genius  of 
the  government  from  its  birth.  It  has  frustrated  the  design  of  our 
fathers  to  form  "  a  more  perfect  Union."  It  has  made  it  impossi- 
ble to  "  establish  justice,"  or  "  to  secure  domestic  tranquillity." 
It  has  weakened  the  "  common  defense  "  by  inviting  foreign 
attack.  It  has  opposed  the  "  general  welfare  "  by  its  merciless 
aristocracy  in  human  flesh.  It  has  denied  us  "  the  blessings  of 
liberty,"  and  given  us  its  own  innumerable  curses  instead.  It  has 
laid  waste  the  fairest  and  most  fertile  half  of  the  Republic,  staying 
its  progress  in  population,  wealth,  power,  knowledge,  civilization, 
the  arts,  and  religion,  thus  heaping  its  burdens  upon  the  whole 
nation,  and  costing  us  far  more  than  the  market  value  of  all  the 
millions  in  bonds.  It  has  made  the  establishment  of  free  schools 
and  a  general  system  of  education  impossible.  It  has  branded 
labor  as  dishonorable  and  degrading.  It  has  filled  the  ranks  of  in- 
fidelity, and  brought  religion  itself  into  scorn,  by  bribing  its  pro- 
fessors to  espouse  its  revolting  iniquity.  It  has  laid  its  wizard  hand 
upon  the  mightiest  statesmen  and  most  royal  intellects  of  the  land, 
and  harnessed  them,  like  beasts  of  burden,  in  its  loathsome  ser- 
vice. It  has  denounced  the  Declaration  of  Independence  as  a  po- 
litical abomination,  and  dealt  with  our  fathers  as  hypocrites,  who 
affirmed  its  self-evident  truths  with  a  mental  reservation,  while 
appealing  to  the  Supreme  Judge  of  the  world  for  the  rectitude  of 
their  intentions.  While  spreading  licentiousness,  concubinage,  and 
crime  where  it  rules,  it  has  lifted  up  its  rebel  voice  in  the  name  of 
the  United  States,  in  pleading  the  cause  of  despotism  in  every  part 
of  the  civilized  world.  And,  as  the  fitting  climax  of  its  career  of 
lawlessness,  it  has  aimed  its  dagger  at  the  government  that  has  fos- 
tered and  guarded  its  life,  and  borne  with  its  evil  deeds,  for  more 
than  seventy  years.  Sir,  this  mighty  rebel  against  all  law,  human 
and  divine,  is  now  within  our  grasp,  and  we  should  strangle  it  for- 
ever. "  New  occasions  teach  new  duties,"  and  we  should  employ 
every  weapon  which  the  laws  of  war  place  within  our  reach  in 
scourging  it  out  of  life.  Not  to  do  so,  I  repeat,  would  be  the  most 
heaven-daring  recreancy  to  the  grand  trust  which  the  circumstances 
of  the  hour  have  committed  to  our  hands.  God  forbid  that  we 
should  throw  away  this  sublime  occasion  for  serving  his  cause  on 
earth,  leaving  our  children  to  deplore  our  failure,  as  Ave  to-day  have 
to  deplore  the  slighted  opportunities  of  the  past. 

Mr.  Chairman,  I  have  not  referred,  directly,  to  the  question  of 
humanity  involved  in  the  policy  of  crushing  slavery  by  the  war 
power.     That  subject  has  been  considerably  discussed  before  the 


CAUSE   AND  CURE   OF   OUR  NATIONAL   TROUBLES.    167 

country,  and  I  do  not  propose  to  enter  upon  it  here,  beyond  the 
incidental  bearings  of  my  argument.  I  waive  none  of  my  human- 
itarian grounds  of  opposition  to  slavery,  but  I  prefer  to  deal  with 
the  practical  issues  of  the  crisis.  I  am  for  putting  down  slavery 
as  a  "  military  necessity,"  and  as  the  dictate  of  the  highest  states- 
manship. The  immediate  question  before  the  country  is  the  sup- 
pression of  the  rebellion,  and  the  common  laws  which  govern  a 
war  between  nations  apply  to  the  conduct  of  a  civil  war.  These 
laws  are  thus  laid  down  by  Vattel :  — 

"  Since  the  object  of  a  just  war  is  to  repress  injustice  and  violence,  and 
forcibly  to  compel  him  who  is  deaf  to  the  voice  of  justice,  we  have  a  right  to 
put  in  practice  against  the  enemy  every  measure  that  is  necessary  in  order  to 
weaken  him,  and  disable  him  from  resisting  us  and  supporting  his  injustice  ; 
and  Ave  may  choose  such  methods  as  are  most  efficacious,  and  best  calculated 
to  attain  the  end  in  view,  provided  they  be  not  of  an  odious  kind,  nor  unjusti- 
fiable in  themselves,  and  prohibited  by  the  law  of  nature." 

Sir,  I  insist  upon  the  application  of  this  well-recognized  princi- 
ple of  public  law.  That  the  overthrow  of  slavery  "  is  necessary 
in  order  to  weaken  "  the  enemy,  "  and  disable  him  from  resisting 
us  and  supporting  his  injustice,"  will  not  be  disputed.  That  it 
would  be  a  measure  "most  efficacious  and  best  calculated  to  attain 
the  end  in  view,"  is  equally  clear.  Nor  would  it  be  "  odious  "  to 
restore  four  millions  of  slaves  to  their  natural  rights,  or  "  unjusti- 
fiable "  in  itself,  or  "  prohibited  by  the  law  of  nature."  The 
friends  of  the  Union  need  ask  nothing  more  than  the  just  applica- 
tion of  the  law  of  nations,  and  they  certainly  should  be  content 
with  nothing  less. 

A  right  to  subdue  the  rebels  carries  with  it  a  right  to  employ 
the  means  of  doing  it,  and  of  doing  it  effectively,  and  with  the 
least  possible  cost.  If  slavery  had  not  been  made  a  party  ques- 
tion, and  trained  us  to  yield  an  unnatural  deference  to  its  assump- 
tions, we  should  have  laid  violent  hands  upon  it  at  once.  The 
thought  of  tenderly  sparing  it  would  not  have  occurred  to  any 
loyal  man.  As  the  most  vulnerable  point  of  the  rebels,  we  should 
naturally  have  aimed  at  it  our  first  and  hardest  blows ;  and  I  insist 
that  we  shall  so  far  forget  our  party  prejudices  and  the  dread  of 
"  abolitionism,"  as  to  do  what  the  dictates  of  common  sense  and  a 
regard  for  our  own  safety  so  clearly  demand.  Facts,  bloody  and 
terrific,  are  every  day  proving  that  slavery,  or  the  Republic,  must 
perish.  As  the  animating  principle  of  the  rebellion  it  stands  be- 
tween us  and  the  Union,  and  we  are  compelled  to  smite  it.  To 
strike  at  it  is  to  strike  at  treason ;  and  to  favor  it  in  any  way,  how- 


168     CAUSE   AND   CURE   OF   OUR  NATIONAL   TROUBLES. 

ever  unwittingly,  is  to  take  sides  with  the  rebels.  They  cherish 
it  as  the  most  precious  of  all  earthly  blessings.  They  love  it  with 
all  the  force  of  a  long-fostered  community  of  feeling  ;  and  the 
assertion  is  well  attested,  that  the  loss  of  a  slave  by  Northern 
agency  excites  more  sudden  and  wide-spread  indignation  than 
would  the  murder  of  his  master. 

Mr.  Chairman,  I  need  make  no  argument  to  prove  that  slavery 
is  an  element  of  positive  strength  to  the  rebels,  unless  we  employ 
it  in  furthering  our  own  cause.  The  slaves  till  the  ground,  and 
supply  the  rebel  army  with  provisions.  Those  not  fit  to  bear  arms 
oversee  the  plantations.  Multitudes  can  be  spared  for  the  army, 
since  women  overseers  are  as  capable  and  trustworthy  as  men. 
Of  the  entire  slave  population  of  the  South,  according  to  the  esti- 
mates of  our  last  census  returns,  one  million  are  males,  capable  of 
bearing  arms.  They  cannot  be  neutral.  As  laborers,  if  not  as 
soldiers,  they  will  be  the  allies  of  the  rebels,  or  of  the  Union. 
Count  all  the  slaves  on  the  side  of  treason,  and  we  are  eighteen 
millions  against  twelve  millions.  Count  them  on  the  loyal  side, 
and  we  are  twenty-two  millions  against  eight.  How  shall  this 
black  power  be  wielded  ?  A  gentleman,  occupying  a  very  high 
official  position,  has  said  that  it  would  be  a  disgrace  to  the  people 
of  the  free  States  to  call  on  four  millions  of  blacks  to  aid  in  putting 
down  eight  millions  of  whites.  Shall  we  then  freely  give  the 
rebellion  four  millions  of  allies,  at  the  certain  cost  to  us  of  many 
millions  of  money  and  many  thousands  of  lives  ?  And,  if  so,  may 
we  not  as  well  reinforce  the  rebels  with  such  portion  of  our  own 
armies  as  will  make  the  contest  equal  in  numbers,  and  thus  save 
our  cause  from  "  disgrace  ?  "  Is  the  conduct  of  this  war  to  be  the 
only  subject  which  requires  men  to  discard  reason  and  forget 
humanity? 

The  rebels  use  their  slaves  in  building  fortifications  ;  shall  we 
not  invite  them  to  our  lines,  and  employ  them  in  the  same  busi- 
ness? The  rebels  employ  them  in  raising  the  provisions,  without 
which  their  armies  must  perish  ;  shall  we  not  entice  them  to  join 
our  standard,  and  thus  compel  the  enemy  to  reinforce  the  planta- 
tion by  weakening  the  army  ?  The  rebels  employ  them  as  cooks, 
nurses,  teamsters,  and  scouts ;  shall  we  decline  such  services  in 
order  to  spare  slavery  ?  The  rebels  organize  regiments  of  black 
men,  who  shoot  down  our  loyal  white  soldiers  ;  shall  we  sacrifice 
our  sons  and  brothers  for  the  sake  of  slavery,  refusing  to  put  black 
men  against  black  men,  when  the  highest  interests  of  both  white 
and  black  plead  for  it  ?     In  the  battles  of  the  Revolution,  and  in 


CAUSE   AND   CURE   OF    OUR  NATIONAL  TROUBLES.     169 

the  War  of  1812,  slaves  and  free  men  of  color  fought  with  a  valor 
unexcelled  by  white  men.  Are  we  afraid  that  a  like  honor  to  the 
colored  man  would  be  repeated,  and  thus  testify  against  his  en- 
slavement ?  I  do  not  say  that  any  general  policy  of  arming  the 
slaves  should  be  avowed  ;  but  that  in  some  capacity,  military  or 
civil,  according  to  the  circumstances  of  each  particular  case,  they 
should  be  used  in  the  necessary  and  appropriate  work  of  weaken- 
ing the  power  of  their  owners.  Under  competent  military  com- 
manders we  may  possibly  be  able  to  subdue  the  rebels  without 
calling  to  our  aid  their  slaves  ;  but  have  we  a  right  to  reject  it,  at 
the  expense  of  prolonging  the  war,  and  augmenting  its  calamities  ? 
Is  it  a  small  thing  to  sacrifice  unnecessarily  the  lives  of  our  young 
and  middle-aged  men,  the  flower  of  the  land,  and  rive  with  sor- 
row the  hearts  of  friends  and  kindred  ?  Can  we  afford  a  dollar 
of  money,  or  a  drop  of  blood,  to  spare  the  satanic  power  that  has 
hatched  this  rebellion  into  life,  and  is  now  the  sole  barrier  to  our 
peace  ?• 

Sir,  when  the  history  of  this  rebellion  shall  be  written,  its  sad- 
dest pages  will  record  the  careful  and  studious  tenderness  of  the 
administration  toward  American  slavery.  I  say  this  with  the 
sincerest  regret.  I  do  not  doubt  the  good  intentions  of  the  Presi- 
dent, nor  would  I  forget  the  trying  circumstances  in  which  he  and 
his  advisers  have  been  placed.  Upon  them,  to  a  very  great  extent, 
must  the  hopes  of  our  country  rest  in  this  crisis.  To  sustain  their 
policy,  wherever  I  can  honestly  do  so,  as  a  representative  of  the 
people,  is  my  first  duty ;  and  my  second  is,  frankly  to  point  out  its 
errors,  whilst  avoiding,  if  possible,  the  attitude  of  an  antagonist. 
Instead  of  making  slavery  the  special  object  of  attack,  as  the  weak 
point  of  the  enemy,  and  the  guilty  cause  of  the  war,  the  policy  of 
the  administration  has  been  that  of  perpetual  deference  to  its 
claims.  The  government  speaks  of  it  with  bated  breath.  It 
handles  it  with  kid  gloves.  Very  often  has  it  spread  its  parental 
wing  over  it,  as  the  object  of  its  peculiar  care.  In  dealing  with 
the  interests  of  rebels,  it  singles  out  as  its  pet  and  favorite,  as  the 
spared  object  of  its  love,  the  hideous  monster  that  is  at  once  the 
body,  soul,  and  spirit  of  the  movement  we  are  endeavoring  to  sub- 
due. While  the  rebels  have  trampled  the  Constitution  under  their 
feet,  and  pursued  their  purposes  like  Thugs  and  pirates,  the  gov- 
ernment has  lost  no  opportunity  of  declaring  that  the  constitutional 
rights  of  slavery  shall  be  protected  by  loyal  men.  The  Secretary 
of  State,  in  his  instructions  to  Mr.  Adams,  of  the  10th  of  April 
last,  says  :     "  You  will  indulge  in  no  expressions  of  harshness,  or 


170     CAUSE  AND   CURE   OF   OUR  NATIONAL  TROUBLES. 

disrespect,  or  even  impatience,  concerning  the  seceded  States,  their 
agents,  or  their  people." 

And  he  warns  Mr.  Adams  to  remember  that  these  States  are, 
and  must  ever  continue  to  be,  "  equal  and  honored  members  of 
this  Federal  Union,"  and  that  their  citizens  "  still  are,  and  always 
must  be,  our  kindred  and  countrymen."  In  his  letter  to  Mr. 
Dayton,  of  April  22,  he  tells  him  that  "  the  rights  of  the  States, 
and  the  condition  of  every  human  being  in  them,  will  remain  sub- 
ject to  exactly  the  same  laws  and  forms  of  administration,  whether 
the  revolution  shall  succeed  or  whether  it  shall  fail ;  their  consti- 
tutions and  laws,  customs,  habits,  and  institutions,  in  either  case, 
will  remain  the  same." 

In  this  he  is  followed  by  the  President  in  his  message  of  the  4th 
of  July.  In  the  letter  just  referred  to  Mr.  Seward  even  denies 
that  any  war  exists  between  the  loyal  and  disloyal  States.  Al- 
though in  his  letter  to  Mr.  Clay,  of  May  6,  he  admits  that  the 
object  of  this  rebellion  is  to  create  a  nation  built  upon  the  principle 
that  African  slavery  is  a  blessing,  to  be  extended  over  the  Continent 
at  whatever  cost  or  sacrifice,  yet  in  his  letter  to  Mr.  Corwin,  of 
April  6,  he  says  :  "  The  President  does  not  expect  that  you  will 
allude  to  the  origin  or  causes  of  our  domestic  difficulties  in  your 
intercourse  with  the  government  of  Mexico." 

The  Secretary  of  War  has  taken  pains  to  say,  with  emphasis 
and  reiteration,  that  "  this  is  a  war  for  the  Union,  for  the  preser- 
vation of  all  constitutional  rights  of  States,  and  the  citizens  of  all 
the  States  of  the  Union." 

I  believe  the  Attorney  General  has  been  equally  emphatic,  and 
that  he  has  even  insisted  upon  the  enforcement  of  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Act  in  Missouri,  without  any  reference  to  the  rebellion. 
The  Secretary  of  the  Interior,  in  a  public  speech  in  August  last, 
declared  that  "  this  is  not  a  war  upon  the  institution  of  slavery, 
but  a  war  for  the  restoration  of  the  Union  and  the  protection  of 
all  citizens,  in  the  South  as  well  as  in  the  North,  in  their  constitu- 
tional rights." 

And  he  affirmed  that  "  there  could  not  be  found  in  South  Car- 
olina a  man  more  anxious,  religiously  and  scrupulously,  to  observe 
all  the  features  of  the  Constitution  relating  to  slavery,  than  Abra- 
ham Lincoln." 

Both  Houses  of  Congress,  in  July,  chimed  in  with  this  chorus  of 
loyal  voices  on  the  side  of  the  assumed  constitutional  rights  of 
rebels,  and  our  innocence  of  any  hostile  designs  toward  them  ; 
while  the  wretched  legislative  blunder  known  as  the  Confiscation 


CAUSE  AND  CURE   OF   OUR  NATIONAL  TROUBLES.     171 

Act  is  a  fruit  of  the  same  fastidious  and  gingerly  policy.  No  one, 
certainly,  should  condemn  the  government  for  defining  its  position 
truly  and  cautiously  as  to  its  purpose  and  policy  respecting  the 
rebellion  ;  but  these  never-ending  platitudes  about  our  kind  inten- 
tions, and  the  constitutional  rights  of  the  scoundrels  who  have 
abdicated  the  Constitution  and  ceased  to  have  any  rights  under  it, 
show  how  fearfully  the  power  of  slavery  continues  to  mesmerize 
the  conscience  and  manhood  of  our  public  men. 

To  this  strange  deference  to  slavery  must  be  referred  the  fact 
that  such  swarms  of  disloyal  men  have  been  retained  in  the  several 
departments  of  the  government,  and  that  the  spirit  and  energy  of 
the  war  have  been  paralyzed  from  the  beginning.  To  the  same 
cause  must  we  attribute  the  recent  proclamations  of  General  Sher- 
man and  General  Dix,  and  the  humiliating  services  of  our  armies 
in  the  capture  and  return  of  fugitive  slaves.  Again  and  again  have 
our  commanders  engaged  in  this  execrable  business,  in  disregard  of 
the  Constitution,  and  in  defiance  of  all  precedent.  In  numerous 
instances  fugitives  have  been  delivered  to  rebel  masters,  —  an 
offense  compounded  of  piracy  and  treason,  which  should  have  been 
punished  with  death.  Our  soldiers  have  not  only  been  compelled 
to  take  upon  them  the  duties  specially  and  exclusively  belonging  to 
the  officers  of  law,  provided  by  the  Fugitive  Act  of  1850,  but  have 
been  required  to  return  fugitives  when  they  had  not  passed  out  of 
the  State  in  which  they  belonged,  and  where,  of  course,  the  law 
itself  would  furnish  no  remedy.  Sir,  our  treatment  of  these  fugi- 
tives has  not  only  been  disgraceful,  but  infamous.  For  the  rebels, 
the  Constitution  has  ceased  to  exist ;  but  were  it  otherwise,  it  is 
neither  the  right  nor  the  duty  of  our  army  to  return  their  slaves. 
The  Constitution  deals  with  them  as  persons,  and  knows  them  only 
as  loyal  or  disloyal.  If  they  are  disloyal,  they  are  simply  belliger- 
ents, and  if  found  among  us  should  no  more  be  allowed  to  return 
than  other  rebels.  If  as  loyal  men  they  come  to  our  lines,  tender- 
ing us  their  aid,  our  commanders  who  return  them  to  their  rebel 
claimants  should  be  summarily  crowned  with  the  honors  of  the 
gallows.  I  cannot  now  go  into  the  history  of  the  numerous  cases 
in  which  officers  of  our  army  have  driven  from  our  lines,  or  re- 
stored to  their  claimants,  the  slaves  who  have  come  within  our 
jurisdiction,  and  whose  information,  had  it  been  accepted,  would 
have  averted  some  of  the  bloodiest  tragedies  of  the  war ;  but  I 
trust  some  painstaking  gentleman  will  undertake  this  task,  and 
perform  it  honestly  and  thoroughly,  however  damning  the  record 
may  be  to  the  parties  concerned. 


172     CAUSE   AND   CURE   OF   OUR  NATIONAL   TROUBLES. 

The  conduct  of  the  administration  toward  General  Fremont 
forms  a  kindred  topic  of  criticism.  When  he  proclaimed  freedom 
to  the  slaves  of  rebels  in  Missouri,  it  was  greeted  with  almost  uni- 
versal joy  throughout  the  free  States.  The  popular  instinct  at 
once  recognized  it  as  a  blow  struck  at  the  heart  of  the  rebellion. 
The  order  that  rebels  should  be  shot  did  not  carry  with  it  half  the 
significance  of  this  proclamation  of  freedom  to  their  slaves.  But 
the  President  at  once  modified  it,  so  far  as  its  anti-slavery  features 
went  beyond  the  Confiscation  Act  of  July.  He  had  no  objection  to 
the  shooting  of  rebels,  though  it  was  as  unwarranted  bv  the  act  of 
Congress  as  the  emancipation  of  their  slaves.  Their  slave  property 
must  be  held  as  more  sacred  than  any  other  property  ;  more  sacred 
than  their  lives  ;  more  sacred  even  than  the  life  of  the  Republic. 
Could  any  policy  be  more  utterly  suicidal  ?  Slavery  burns  our 
bridges ;  poisons  our  wells ;  destroys  the  lives  of  our  people  ;  fires 
our  hospitals ;  murders  our  wounded  soldiers ;  lays  waste  the 
country  ;  turns  pirate  on  the  sea  ;  confiscates  our  property  of  every 
description  ;  arms  with  butcher-knives  and  tomahawks  the  savages 
of  the  Southwest  as  its  allies  ;  deals  with  our  institutions  with  re- 
morseless fury ;  and,  in  short,  inundates  the  land  with  the  villain- 
ies and  crimes  born  of  its  devilish  rule  over  these  States  ;  but  when 
General  Fremont  declares  that  the  slaves  of  rebels  in  arms  against 
us  within  his  military  jurisdiction  shall  be  free,  the  President  —  no 
doubt  with  the  best  of  motives,  but  as  if  determined  to  give  all  the 
aid  in  his  power  to  the  rebellion  —  countermands  the  proclamation. 
He  says  he  does  this  "  most  cheerfully." 

The  rebels  may  be  shot,  but  while  they  keep  up  the  fight  against 
us  their  slaves  shall  supply  them  with  provisions,  without  which 
their  armies  must  perish,  and  the  lives  of  loyal  men  might  be  spared. 
The  Confiscation  Act  bribes  all  the  slaves  of  the  South  to  murder 
our  people,  and  the  President  refuses  to  allow  the  war  power  to  go 
beyond  it.  The  effect  is,  that  if  the  slaves  engage  in  the  war  at 
all,  they  must  do  so  as  our  enemies,  while,  if  they  remain  at  home 
on  their  plantations,  in  the  business  of  feeding  the  rebel  army,  they 
will  have  the  protection  both  of  the  loyal  and  confederate  govern- 
ments. Sir,  is  not  this  a  practical  espousal  of  the  rebellion  by  the 
administration  ?  When  both  parties  to  this  struggle  agree  in  sub- 
ordinating the  Union  to  slavery,  is  it  not  time  for  the  people  to 
speak  ?  When  the  country  is  pouring  out  its  treasure  in  streams 
that  threaten  it  with  financial  ruin,  and  periling  the  lives  of  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  our  picked  men  to  save  the  Republic,  can  we 
endure  a  policy  so  fatal  to  our  success  and  so  merciless  in  its  results  ? 


CAUSE   AND   CURE    OF    OUR  NATIONAL   TROUBLES.     178 

It  is  known  that  General  Fremont's  proclamation  was  modified  to 
accommodate  the  loyal  slaveholders  of  Kentucky  ;  but  what  right, 
I  ask,  had  the  loyal  men  of  that  State  to  complain  if  the  disloyal 
men  of  Missouri  forfeited  their  slaves  by  treason  ?  If  pretended 
loyal  men  in  Kentucky  or  elsewhere  value  slavery  above  the  Union, 
then  they  are  not  loyal,  and  the  attempt  to  make  them  so  by  con- 
cessions will  be  vain.  A  conditional  Union  man  is  no  Union  man 
at  all.  Loyalty  must  be  absolute.  "  If  the  Lord  be  God,  serve 
him  ;  but  if  Baal,  serve  him.v  There  can  be  no  middle  ground. 
This,  as  I  have  said,  is  a  war  between  the  government  and  slav- 
ery, and  no  man  can  really  serve  these  two  masters  at  the  same 
time. 

To  this  dread  of  offending  slavery  must  be  charged  our  loss  of 
the  sympathy  and  respect  of  the  civilized  world.  We  have  no  true 
battle-cry.  We  are  fighting  only  for  the  Union,  and  taking  pains 
to  tell  mankind  that  this  does  not  mean  liberty.  We  are  the  cham- 
pions of  "law and  order,"  and  by  giving  foreign  nations  to  under- 
stand that  we  are  making  common  cause  with  the  rebels  for  slavery, 
or  at  least  doing  nothing  to  oppose  it,  we  justify  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell in  saying  that  this  is  simply  "  a  war  for  independence  on  the 
part  of  the  South,  and  for  power  on  the  part  of  the  North."  On  the 
other  hand,  by  assuming  the  attitude  of  revolutionists,  the  rebels  ap- 
peal successfully  to  the  sympathy  of  the  millions  in  the  Old  World 
who  love  liberty,  and  whose  zealous  espousal  of  our  cause  could  be 
secured  by  writing  freedom  on  our  banner.  Thus  slavery  murders 
our  cause  at  home  and  invites  hostility  from  abroad.  According  to 
Mr.  Grattan,  late  British  Consul  at  Boston,  the  demand  for  eman- 
cipation by  our  government  "  would  ring  in  the  ears  of  all  Eng- 
land like  an  alarm-bell,  and  stir  the  depths  of  popular  feeling  with 
the  fervor  of  the  Reformation,  or  the  fanaticism  of  the  Crusades." 
This  is  probably  overstated,  but  is  by  no  means  wholly  wanting 
in  truth.  I  believe  it  was  Daniel  Webster  who  declared  that  pub- 
lic opinion  is  the  mightiest  power  on  earth.  This  power,  to-day, 
is  against  us,  through  the  timid  and  feeble  policy  we  have  pursued 
in  dealing  with  the  slave-breeders  of  the  South.  England  has  in- 
suited  us,  and  we  are  still  in  imminent  peril  of  a  foreign  war, 
because  slavery  has  palsied  the  arm  of  the  government,  allowed 
it  to  utter  no  spirit-stirring  word,  balked  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
people,  belittled  the  issue  involved  in  our  struggle,  and  held 
in  fatal  inactivity  for  months  past  our  eager  and  brave  soldiers 
who  would  have  brought  this  rebellion  to  an  end  ere  to-day,  had 
they  been  permitted  to  march  against  the  enemy  under  competent 


174      CAUSE   AND    CURE    OF    OUR  NATIONAL  TROUBLES. 

commanders.  The  government,  taking  counsel  of  its  fears,  has 
not  dared  to  adopt  a  just  policy,  for  fear  of  alienating  its  own  pre- 
tended friends.  The  mistake  of  swerving  the  whole  management 
of  the  war  from  its  true  course,  in  order  to  accommodate  the 
equivocal  loyalty  of  the  border  States,  has  brought  the  country  to 
the  very  brink  of  ruin.  It  prevented,  at  first,  the  adoption  of  those 
bold  and  vigorous  measures  which  might  have  strangled  the  rebel- 
lion before  its  birth,  and  is  still  protracting  the  struggle  and  sport- 
ing with  our  opportunities  of  success.  Sir,  our  policy  must  be 
changed,  radically  and  speedily,  if  we  mean  to  be  in  earnest.  We 
must  let  the  world  know  that  this  is  not  a  struggle  for  slavery  in 
the  border  States,  but  for  Liberty  and  Republicanism,  and  thus  enlist 
the  millions  in  the  Old  World  in  our  cause,  by  fighting  their  battle 
as  well  as  our  own.  If  we  fail  to  do  this,  and  continue  to  carry  on 
the  war  on  the  principle  of  "  how  not  to  do  it,"  our  grand  armies 
will  continue  idle,  our  means  of  carrying  on  the  war  will  be  ex- 
hausted, the  spirit  of  the  people  will  at  last  give  wTay,  the  power 
of  the  rebels  will  increase,  foreign  wars  will  be  inevitable,  and  the 
cause  of  free  government  throughout  the  world  will  find  a  common 
grave  with  the  institutions  of  our  fathers. 

Mr.  Chairman,  the  time  has  come  for  us  to  deal  with  the  actual 
and  stern  facts  of  our  condition.  We  must  cease  to  regard  the 
rebels  as  misguided  men,  whose  infatuation  is  to  be  deplored,  whilst 
we  still  hope  to  bring  them  to  their  senses.  We  must  cease  our 
attacks  upon  the  strong  points  only  of  the  enemy,  whilst  we  fail  to 
strike  at  the  weak  ones,  and  madly  hope  to  woo  them  back  to  a 
sense  of  their  folly  and  crime.  We  must  abandon,  entirely,  the 
delusion  that  rebels  and  outlaws  have  any  rights  under  the  Con- 
stitution, and  deal  with  them  as  rebels  and  outlaws.  No  men  since 
the  woidd  was  made  wrere  ever  more  in  earnest.  They  hate  us 
supremely.  The  rattlesnake  is  the  fitly  chosen  symbol  of  their 
black  confederacy.  Their  wrath  is  a  desolating  fire.  The  felt 
consciousness  that  they  are  in  the  wrong,  and  that  we  have  for  so 
manv  long  years  been  the  victims  of  their  injustice,  animates  them 
with  the  fury  of  devils.  They  despise  us  all  the  more  for  every 
appeal  we  make  to  their  sense  of  justice  and  fair  play.  They  re- 
gard our  free  labor  and  free  institutions  with  unutterable  abhor- 
rence. If  they  had  the  power  they  would  exterminate  us  from  the 
face  of  the  earth.  They  have  turned  loose  to  prey  upon  the  Repub- 
lic the  transmitted  vices  and  diabolisms  of  two  hundred  years,  and 
sooner  than  fail  in  their  struggle  they  would  light  up  heaven  itself 
with  the  red  glare  of  the  Pit,  and  convert  the  earth  into  a  carnival 


CAUSE   AND   CURE   OF   OUR  NATIONAL   TROUBLES.     175 

of  devils.  They  have  a  mighty  army,  led  by  some  of  the  ablest 
commanders  in  the  world,  and  nerved  for  bloody  deeds  by  all  the 
power  of  desperation. 

Sir,  in  such  a  contest  we  can  spare  no  possible  advantage.  We 
want  no  war  "  conducted  on  peace  principles."  Every  weapon 
within  our  reach  must  be  grasped.  Every  arrow  in  our  quiver 
must  be  sped  toward  the  heart  of  a  rebel.  Every  obstacle  in  the 
path  of  our  conquering  hosts  must  be  trodden  down.  War  means 
ruin,  destruction,  death,  —  and  loyal  slaveholders,  and  loyal  non- 
slaveholders  must  stand  out  of  the  way,  in  this  tremendous  encoun- 
ter with  the  assassins  of  liberty  and  free  government.  All  tender- 
ness toward  such  a  foe  is  treason  to  our  cause,  murder  to  our 
people,  faithlessness  to  the  grandest  and  holiest  trust  ever  commit- 
ted to  a  free  people.  The  policy  for  which  I  plead,  sooner  or  later, 
must  be  adopted,  if  the  rebels  are  to  be  mastered,  and  every  delay 
puts  in  peril  the  precious  interests  for  which  we  fight.  Let  us  act 
at  once,  putting  forth  all  our  power.  Let  the  war  be  made  just  as 
terrific  to  the  rebels  as  possible,  consistently  with  the  laws  of  war. 
This  will  be  at  once  a  work  of  mercy,  and  the  surest  means  of  our 
triumph.  Let  us  not  mock  the  Almighty  by  waiting  till  we  are 
forced  by  needless  calamities  to  do  what  should  be  done  at  once, 
as  the  dictate  alike  of  humanity  and  policy ;  for  it  may  happen, 
when  this  rebellion  shall  have  hung  crape  on  one  hundred  thousand 
doors  in  the  free  States,  that  a  ruined  country  will  taunt  us  with 
the  victory  which  might  have  been  ours,  and  leave  us  only  the 
poor  consolation  of  bitter  and  unavailing  regrets. 

Mr.  Chairman,  the  sweeping  policy  I  would  have  the  govern 
ment  adopt  toward  slavery  will  be  objected  to  on  the  ground  of 
its  injustice  to   the   loyal    slaveholders   of   the    South.      To  this 
objection  I  have  several  replies  to  make. 

In  the  first  place,  I  would  pay  to  every  loyal  slave  claimant,  on 
due  proof  of  loyalty,  the  fairly-assessed  value  of  his  slaves.  I 
would  not  do  this  as  compensation,  for  no  man  should  receive  pay 
for  robbing  another  of  his  earnings,  and  plundering  him  of  his 
humanity  ;  but  as  a  means  of  facilitating  a  settlement  of  our 
troubles,  and  securing  a  lasting  peace,  I  would  tax  the  public 
treasury  to  this  extent.  From  the  beginning,  slavery  has  been  an 
immense  pecuniary  burden,  and  we  can  well  afford  to  pay  the 
amount  which  this  policy  would  impose,  for  the  sake  of  getting 
rid  of  that  burden  forever. 

In  the  next  place,  I  reply  that  the  total  extirpation  of  slavery 
will  be  our  only  security  against  future  trouble  and  discord.     By 


176     CAUSE   AND   CURE    OF   OUR  NATIONAL   TROUBLES. 

any  sacrifice,  and  by  all  possible  means,  should  we  now  guard 
against  a  repetition  of  the  scenes  through  which  we  have  been 
called  to  pass.  If  we  will  heed  the  lesson  of  experience,  we  can- 
not go  astray.  Our  fathers  were  very  sure  they  had  opened  a  vein 
that  would  speedily  bleed  slavery  to  death  ;  but  this  rebellion  is 
the  bloody  witness  of  their  mistake.  Shall  we  not  profit  by  the 
lesson  ?  It  may  be  that,  if  the  slaves  of  rebels  are  set  free,  slav- 
ery itself  will  fall.  I  do  not  believe  it.  The  assertion  has  neither 
fact  nor  philosophy  to  sustain  it.  No  man,  at  any  rate,  knows  it  to 
be  true  ;  and  for  this  reason,  having  now  the  power,  we  should 
foreordain  the  blessed  fact  which  else  may  never  come  to  pass. 
We  have  no  right,  certainly,  to  expose  the  future  glory  and  peace 
of  our  country  even  to  remote  hazard,  if  we  hold  in  our  hands  the 
power  to  prevent  it. 

I  reply  further,  that  while  loyal  slaveholders  may  dislike  ex- 
ceedingly to  part  with  their  slaves,  and  still  more  to  give  up  their 
cherished  institution,  yet  the  hardship  of  their  case  is  not  peculiar. 
This  rebellion  is  placing  heavy  burdens  upon  all  loyal  men.  At 
whatever  cost,  and  at  all  hazards,  it  must  be  put  down.  This  is 
the  principle  on  which  we  must  act.  Accordingly,  the  State  which 
I  in  part  represent,  has  not  only  done  her  full  share  in  the  way  of 
means  to  carry  on  the  war,  but  has  placed  in  the  field  one-twen- 
tieth part  of  her  entire  population.  She  will  be  ready  to  make 
still  further  sacrifices  when  they  shall  be  demanded.  Neither  our 
property  nor  the  lives  of  our  people  will  be  counted  too  precious 
for  an  offering.  If  loyal  slaveholders  are  as  patriotic  as  loyal  non- 
slaveholders,  they  will  be  equally  ready  to  make  sacrifices.  Edu- 
cation and  habit  have  wedded  them  to  the  system  of  slavery, 
which,  for  three  quarters  of  a  century,  has  been  preying  upon  the 
nation's  life,  and  at  last  has  ripened  into  the  fruitage  of  civil  war. 
They  cannot  demand  of  the  millions  of  non-slaveholders,  North 
and  South,  that  this  evil  element  shall  be  continued.  As  loyal 
men  they  cannot  ask  us  to  sacrifice  the  greater  to  the  less,  but  in 
order  to  save  the  ship  of  State  should  agree  that  slavery  shall  be 
thrown  into  the  sea. 

I  reply,  finally,  that  if  the  war  is  to  be  conducted  on  the  policy 
of  fully  accommodating  the  wishes  of  loyal  slaveholders,  that  pol- 
icy will  be  found  impracticable,  and  therefore  need  not  be  at- 
tempted. Loyal  slaveholders  on  this  floor  vote  to  give  the  rebels 
the  benefit  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Act  of  1850  in  recapturing  their 
slaves.  They  vote  also  that  our  loyal  soldiers  shall  volunteer  as 
the  slavehounds  of  rebels  in  the  same  villainous  employment.    Loyal 


CAUSE  AND   CURE  OF   OUR  NATIONAL  TROUBLES.    177 

slaveholders  in  both  ends  of  this  Capitol  oppose  the  emancipation 
of  the  slaves  of  rebels,  and  publicly  declare  that  such  a  measure 
would  consolidate  the  people  of  the  South  as  one  man  against  the 
Union.  They  do  not  conceal  the  fact  that  they  regard  slavery  as 
paramount  to  the  Union.  Sir,  I  shall  most  certainly  refuse  to  go 
that  length.  On  the  contrary,  the  duty  I  learn  from  the  position 
of  these  men  is  that  of  demolishing  every  vestige  of  slavery  in  the 
land.  Since  I  cannot  possibly  accommodate  them,  and  must  give 
offense,  I  prefer  to  divide  with  them  on  principle,  and  extricate  my 
conscience  and  self-respect  entirely  from  the  thralldom  of  a  false 
position.  I  do  not  stop  to  inquire  how  many  will  agree  with  me,  be- 
cause I  am  not  willing  "  to  put  duty  to  the  vote  ;  "  and  while  I  am 
ready  to  support  any  measure  giving  freedom  only  to  the  slaves  of 
rebels,  I  must  not  fail  to  stand  by  my  own  convictions,  while  leaving 
the  wisdom  or  the  folly  of  my  position  to  be  tried  by  the  ordeal  of 
time. 

I  must  not  conclude,  Mr.  Chairman,  without  noticing  a  further 
objection  to  the  policy  for  which  I  contend.  I  refer  to  the  alleged 
danger-  of  this  policy,  and  the  disposition  of  the  slaves  after  they 
shall  be  free.  This  objection,  like  the  one  just  considered,  invites 
several  answers. 

First,  if  I  am  right  in  dealing  with  the  rebellion  as  the  child  of 
slavery,  and  in  arguing  that  the  salvation  of  the  Republic  demands 
its  overthrow,  then  my  position  is  fully  sustained.  It  will  not  do  to 
talk  about  consequences,  for  no  possible  consequences  of  emancipa- 
tion could  be  worse  than  destroying  the  government  and  subvert- 
ing our  free  institutions.  Do  you  ask  me  if  I  would  "  turn  the 
slaves  loose  ?  "  I  reply,  that  this  rebellion,  threatening  to  desolate 
our  land  with  the  grandest  assemblage  of  horrors  ever  witnessed 
on  earth,  is  not  the  consequence  of  "  turning  the  slaves  loose," 
but  of  holding  them  in  chains.  Do  you  ask  me  what  I  would  do 
with  these  liberated  millions  ?  I  answer  by  asking  what  they  will 
do  with  us,  if  we  insist  on  keeping  them  in  bondage  ?  Do  you  tell 
me  that  if  the  slaves  are  set  free  they  will  rise  against  their  former 
masters,  and  pillage  and  lay  waste  the  South  ?  I  answer,  that  all 
that,  should  it  happen,  would  be  far  less  deplorable  than  a  struggle 
like  this,  involving  the  existence  of  a  free  nation  of  thirt}'  millions 
of  people,  and  the  hope  of  the  civilized  world.  If,  therefore,  our 
policy  is  to  be  determined  by  the  question  of  consequences,  the 
argument  is  clearly  on  the  side  of  universal  freedom. 

I  reply,  in  the  second  place,  that  emancipation  will  be  wise,  safe, 
and  profitable  to  both  master  and  slave.     In  this  assertion  I  am 

12 


178     CAUSE   AND   CURE   OP   OUR  NATIONAL   TROUBLES. 

sustained  by  all  history  and  experience  relating  to  the  question. 
Most  triumphantly  can  I  refer  to  the  case  of  the  British  West  In- 
dies. There,  by  an  act  of  legislation,  nearly  a  million  of  slaves 
within  those  narrow  islands,  and  greatly  outnumbering  the  white 
population,  were  in  an  instant  made  free.  No  act  of  violence  fol- 
lowed. No  white  man  suffered  in  person  or  estate,  by  reason  of 
emancipation.  In  the  island  of  Jamaica  thirty  insurrections  oc- 
curred in  the  century  which  preceded  emancipation,  but  not  one 
has  occurred  since.  If  experience  has  established  any  fact,  it  is, 
that  violence  and  crime  on  the  part  of  the  negro  race  are  not  the 
concomitants  of  freedom,  but  the  offspring  of  slavery,  and  that 
the  chief  difficulty  in  the  way  of  emancipation  has  always  been 
the  unfitness  of  the  master.  The  history  of  emancipation  in  the 
French  dominions,  in  South  America,  in  the  Danish  West  Indies, 
in  Mexico,  and  in  the  West  India  colonies  of  the  Dutch,  will  fur- 
nish concurrent  testimony  with  that  of  the  British  West  Indies  as 
to  the  safety  and  profitableness  of  emancipation.  It, has  been  fol- 
lowed by  general  prosperity,  and  in  the  English  and  Danish  West 
Indies,  especially,  the  slaves  have  become  landholders,  schools  have 
been  established,  exports  have  increased,  happiness  has  been  pro- 
moted, and  progress  has  become  a  law. 

I  answer,  next,  that  if  the  slaves  of  the  South  are  set  free  they 
will  not  be  pent  up  within  the  confines  of  a  few  small  islands,  like 
those  subjected  to  the  great  British  experiment  referred  to.  They 
occupy  a  country  stretching  between  two  oceans,  vast  portions  of 
which  are  yet  a  wilderness.  There  is  not  only  abundant  room  for 
them,  but  abundant  need  of  their  labor.  They  are  not  unfamiliar 
with  industrial  pursuits,  and  if  compensated  for  their  labor,  and 
acted  upon  by  the  renovating  power  of  kindness,  they  will  not  only 
take  care  of  themselves,  but  become  a  mighty  element  of  wealth 
in  the  latitudes  of  our  country  peculiarly  suited  to  their  constitu- 
tion. Their  local  attachments  are  remarkable,  and  but  for  slavery 
they  would  not  be  found  either  in  Canada  or  the  Northern  States. 
But  I  would  give  them  freedom,  and  then  leave  them  to  the  law 
of  their  condition.  Let  them  work  out  their  own  destiny,  and  let 
them  have  fair  play  in  fighting  the  battle  of  life.  Colonization  is  one 
of  the  great  tidal  forces  of  modern  civilization,  and  the  enslaved 
races  can  scarcely  escape  the  appeal  it  will  make  to  their  approving 
judgment.  Hayti,  near  our  shores,  stretches  forth  her  hands  to  wel- 
come them  to  happy  homes  among  a  kindred  people,  where  they 
can  enjoy  the  blessing  of  equal  rights.  Remove  slavery,  and  I  be- 
lieve the  negro  race  among  us  will  naturally  gravitate  toward  a 


CAUSE    AND   CURE   OF   OUR  NATIONAL  TROUBLES.    179 

centre  of  its  own,  and  separate  itself  from  the  race  of  its  former 
oppressors.  Our  prejudices,  borrowed  from  slavery,  and  still  contin- 
uing to  hold  their  sway,  may  aid  this  result ;  but  if  from  any  cause 
whatever  these  people  should  seek  their  welfare  in  other  lands,  I 
would,  while  leaving  them  perfectly  free  in  this  respect,  encourage 
them  by  all  the  reasonable  means  in  our  power. 

Lastly,  to  the  assumed  danger  and  impracticability  of  emancipa- 
tion, I  reply  in  the  words  of  Dr.  Channing  :  — 

"  It  is  an  impious  error  to  suppose  that  injustice  is  a  necessity  under  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  Most  High.  It  is  disloyalty  to  principle,  treachery  to  virtue, 
to  suppose  that  a  righteous,  generous  work,  conceived  in  a  sense  of  duty,  and 
carried  on  with  deliberate  forethought,  can  issue  in  misery,  in  ruin.  To  this 
want  of  faith  in  rectitude,  society  owes  its  woes ;  owes  the  licensed  crimes  and 
frauds  of  statesmen  :  the  licensed  frauds  of  trade ;  the  continuance  of  slavery. 
Once  let  men  put  faith  in  rectitude  —  let  them  feel  that  justice  is  strength  — 
that  disinterestedness  is  a  sun  and  a  shield  —  that  selfishness  and  crime  are 
weak  and  miserable — and  the  face  of  the  earth  would  be  changed  ;  the  groans 
of  ages  would  cease." 

This,  sir,  is  the  impregnable  ground  on  which  I  stand.  God  has 
not  closed  up  the  paths  of  justice  and  mercy  among  men.  He  has 
not  permitted  a  remediless  evil.  As  I  reject  atheism,  so  do  I  be- 
lieve it  safe  to  restore  to  our  enslaved  millions  the  title-deeds  of 
their  freedom  ;  safe  to  give  them  a  fair  day's  wages  for  a  fair  day's 
work  :  safe  to  recognize  their  rights  0f  marriage  and  the  sacredness 
of  the  family ;  safe  to  allow  them  the  untrammeled  use  of  their 
powers  of  mind  and  body  in  the  pursuit  of  their  own  highest  good. 
And,  I  add,  that  the  most  deplorable  sign  of  our  times  is  the  fact 
that  the  denial  of  all  this  is  made  the  basis  of  our  policy,  and  the 
test  of  our  statesmanship.  Very  many  of  our  public  men  practi- 
cally disown  the  moral  government  of  the  world.  Expediency  is 
the  law  of  their  lives.  They  lack  faith  in  the  almightiness  of  truth 
and  the  profitableness  of  duty.  With  them  diplomacy  and  crook- 
edness seem  to  be  innate  qualities,  and  it  sometimes  unfortunately 
happens  that  men  are  found  in  high  places  of  power  and  trust  while 
scoffing  at  virtue  and  wallowing  in  corruption. 

Sir,  in  this  season  of  great  national  trial  we  can  only  hope  for  the 
smiles  of  our  Maker,  through  the  recognition  of  liberty,  justice, 
and  humanity,  by  those  who  wield  the  great  and  responsible  powers 
of  government. 

"  God  give  us  men  !     A  time  like  this  demands 
Strong  minds,  great  hearts,  true  faith,  and  ready  hands  ; 
Men  whom  the  lust  of  office  does  not  kill ; 
Men  whom  the  spoils  of  office  cannot  buy  ; 


180    CAUSE  AND   CURE   OE   OUR  NATIONAL   TROUBLES. 

Men  who  possess  opinion  and  a  will ; 

Men  who  have  honor  —  men  who  will  not  lie  ; 

Men  who  can  stand  before  a  demagogue, 

And  damn  his  treacherous  flatteries  without  winking ; 

Tall  men,  sun-crowned,  who  live  above  the  fog 

In  public  duty,  and  in  private  thinking. 

For  while  the  rabble,  with  their  thumb-screw  creeds, 

Mingle  in  selfish  strife,  lo  !  freedom  weeps, 

Wrong  rules  the  land,  and  waiting  justice  sleeps." 


CONFISCATION  AND   LIBERATION. 

HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES,   MAY  23,  1862. 

[The  bill,  in  support  of  which  this  speech  was  made,  simply  declared  free  the  slaves 
of  armed  rebels  and  their  abettors,  and  made  proof  of  loyalty  by  the  claimant  of  a 
fugitive  necessary  to  his  recovery.  It  now  seems  utterly  incredible  that  only  three 
da}rs  afterwards  so  obviously  moderate  a  proposition  was  voted  down  in  the  House, 
then  overwhelmingly  Republican  ;  but  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  of  the  follow- 
ing year,  and  the  radical  policy  inaugurated  by  Congress  about  the  same  time,  fully 
made  good  the  prophesies  here  uttered.] 

Mr.  Speaker,  —  Before  closino-  the  debate  on  the  measures  of 
confiscation  and  liberation  now  before  us,  I  desire  to  submit  some 
general  observations  which  I  hope  may  not  be  regarded  as  irrele- 
vant to  these  topics,  or  wholly  unworthy  of  consideration.  I  do 
not  propose  to  discuss  these  particular  measures.  I  deem  it  wholly 
unnecessary.  I  believe  everything  has  been  said,  on  the  one  side 
and  on  the  other,  which  can  be  said,  and  far  more  than  was  de- 
manded by  an  honest  search  after  the  truth.  Certainly  I  shall  not 
argue,  at  any  length,  the  power  of  Congress  to  confiscate  the 
property  of  rebels.  I  take  it  for  granted.  I  have  not  allowed 
myself,  for  a  single  moment,  to  regard  the  question  as  open  to 
debate,  nor  do  I  believe  it  would  ever  have  been  seriously  contro- 
verted, had  it  not  been  for  the  infectious  influence  of  slavery  in 
giving  us  false  views  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  It 
was  ordained  "  to  form  a  more  perfect  Union,  establish  justice,  in- 
sure domestic  tranquillity,  provide  for  the  common  defense,  promote 
the  general  welfare,  and  secure  the  blessings  of  liberty  to  ourselves 
and  our  posterity."  I  take  it  for  granted  that  our  fathers  meant 
to  confer,  and  did  confer  upon  us,  by  the  terms  of  the  Constitution, 
the  power  to  execute  these  grand  purposes,  and  made  adequate 
provision  for  the  exercise  of  that  power.  I  feel  entirely  safe  in 
indulging  this  reasonable  intendment  in  their  favor ;  and  I  hand 
over  to  other  gentlemen  on  this  floor,  and  in  the  other  end  of  the 
Capitol,  the  ungracious  task  of  dealing  with  the  Constitution  as  a 
cunningly  devised  scheme  for  permitting  insurrections,  conniving 
at  civil  war,  and  rendering  treason  to  the  government  safer  than 
loyalty.  #r 


182  CONFISCATION  AND  LIBERATION. 

Sir,  I  have  little  sympathy  for  any  such  friends  of  the  Union, 
and  I  honor  the  Constitution  too  much,  and  regard  the  memory  of 
its  founders  too  sacredly,  to  permit  myself  thus  to  trifle  with  the 
work  of  their  hands.  The  Constitution  is  not  a  shield  for  the 
protection  of  rebels  against  the  government,  but  a  sword  for  smit- 
ing them  to  the  earth,  and  preserving  the  nation's  life.  Every 
man  who  has  been  blessed  with  a  moderate  share  of  common  sense, 
and  who  really  loves  his  country,  will  accept  this  as  an  obvious 
truth.     Congress  has  power  — 

"  To  declare  war;  to  grant  letters  of  marque  and  reprisal ;  to  make  rules 
concerning  captures  on  land  and  water ;  to  raise  and  support  armies  ;  to  pro- 
vide and  maintain  a  navy ;  to  make  rules  for  the  government  and  regulation 
of  the  land  and  naval  forces ;  to  provide  for  calling  forth  the  militia  to  execute 
the  laws  of  the  Union,  suppress  insurrections,  and  repel  invasions ;  and  to  make 
all  laws  which  shall  be  necessary  and  proper  for  carrying  into  effect  the  foregoing 
powers" 

Here  we  find  ample  and  express  authority  for  any  and  every 
measure  which  Congress  may  see  fit  to  employ,  consistently  with 
the  law  of  nations  and  the  usages  of  war,  which  fully  recognize 
the  power  of  confiscation.  And  yet  for  long  weary  months  we 
have  been  arguing,  doubting:,  hesitating,  deprecating.    As  to  what 

c5  O7  C7  O7  L  © 

is  called  slave  property,  we  have  been  most  fastidiously  careful 
not  to  harm  it.  We  have  seen  a  lion  in  our  path  at  every  step. 
We  have  seemed  to  play  the  part  of  graceless  stipendiaries  of 
slaveholding  rebels,  seeking  bv  technical  subterfuges  and  the  in- 

©  ©         J  © 

genious  arts  of  pensioned  attorneys  in  desperate  cases,  to  shield 
their  precious  interests  from  all  possible  mischief.  So  long  have 
we  been  tugging  in  the  harness  of  our  Southern  taskmasters,  that 
even  this  horrid  conspiracy  of  rebel  slave-masters  cannot  wholly 
divorce  us  from  the  idea  that  slavery  and  the  Constitution  are 
one  and  inseparable.  Sir,  while  I  honor  the  present  Congress 
for  its  great  labors  and  the  many  good  deeds  it  has  performed,  I 
must  yet  count  it  a  shame  and  a  reproach  that  we  did  not 
promptly  enact  an  efficient  Confiscation  Bill  in  December  last, 
which  would  have  gone  hand  in  hand  with  our  conquering  legions 
in  the  work  of  trampling  down  the  power  of  this  rebellion,  and 
restoring  our  bleeding  and  distracted  country  to  the  blessings  of 
peace.  Many  thousands  of  dear  lives,  and  many  millions  of  money 
would  thus  have  been  spared,  for  which  a  poor  atonement,  indeed, 
can  be  found  in  the  learned  constitutional  arguments  against  con- 
fiscation,  which  have  consumed  so  much  of  the  time  of  the  present 
session  of  Congress. 


CONFISCATION   AND   LIBERATION.  183 

Mr.  Speaker,  this  never  ending  gabble  about  the  sacredness  of 
the  Constitution  is  becoming  intolerable  ;  and  it  comes  from  ex- 
ceedingly suspicious  sources.  We  find  that  just  in  proportion  as  a 
man  loves  slavery,  and  desires  to  exalt  it  above  all  "  principalities 
and  powers,"  he  becomes  most  devoutly  in  love  with  the  Constitu- 
tion, as  he  understands  it.  No  class  of  men  among  us  have  so 
much  to  say  about  the  Constitution  as  those  who  are  known  to 
sympathize  with  Jefferson  Davis  and  the  pirate  crew  at  his  heels. 
It  will  not  be  forgotten  that  the  red-handed  murderers  and  thieves 
who  set  this  rebellion  on  foot  went  out  of  the  Union  yelping  for 
the  Constitution,  which  they  had  conspired  to  overthrow  through 
the  blackest  perjury  and  treason  that  ever  confronted  the  Al- 
mighty. I  remember  no  men  who  were  so  zealously  on  the  side 
of  the  Constitution  or  so  studiously  careful  to  save  it  from  all 
detriment  as  Breckinridge  and  Burnett,  while  they  remained  nom- 
inally on  the  side  of  the  Union.  Every  graceless  miscreant  who 
has  wallowed  in  the  filthy  mire  of  slavery  till  he  has  survived  his 
own  conscience,  every  man  who  would  be  openly  on  the  side  of 
the  rebels  if  he  had  the  courage  to  take  his  stand,  every  opponent 
of  a  vigorous  prosecution  of  the  war  by  the  use  of  all  the  powers 
of  war,  will  be  found  fulminating  his  dastardly  diatribes  on  the 
duty  of  standing  by  the  Constitution.  I  notice,  also  —  and  I  do 
not  mean  to  be  offensive  —  that  the  Democratic  leaders  who  have 
recently  issued  a  semi-rebel  address  from  this  city,  are  most  pain- 
fully exercised  lest  the  Constitution  should  suffer  in  the  hands  of 
the  present  administration. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  prefer  to  muster  in  different  company.  I  prefer 
to  show  my  fealty  to  the  Constitution  by  treating  it  as  the  charter 
of  liberty,  as  the  foe  of  rebellion,  and  as  amply  armed  with  the 
power  to  save  its  own  life  by  crushing  its  foes.  Sir,  who  are  these 
men  in  whose  behalf  the  Constitution  is  so  persistently  invoked  ? 
They  are  rebels,  who  have  defied  its  power,  and  who,  by  taking 
their  stand  outside  of  the  Constitution,  have  driven  us  to  meet 
them  on  their  own  chosen  ground.  By  abdicating  the  Constitu- 
tion, and  conspiring  against  the  government,  they  have  assumed 
the  character  of  public  enemies,  and  have  thus  no  rights  but  the 
rights  of  war,  while  in  dealing  with  them  we  are  bound  by  no 
laws  but  the  laws  of  war.  Those  provisions  of  the  Constitution 
which  define  the  rights  of  persons  in  time  of  peace,  and  which 
must  be  observed  in  dealing  with  criminals,  have  no  applica- 
tion whatever  to  a  state  of  war,  in  which  criminals  acquire  the 
character  of  enemies.     The  powers  of  war  are  not  unconstitu- 


184  CONFISCATION   AND  LIBERATION. 

tional,  because  they  are  recognized  and  provided  for  by  the  Con- 
stitution ;  but  their  function  and  exercise  are  to  be  regulated  by 
the  law  of  nations  governing  a  state  of  war,  and  not  by  the  terms 
of  the  Constitution  applicable  to  a  state  of  peace.  Hence  I  must 
regard  much  of  this  clamor  about  the  violation  of  the  Constitution 
on  our  part  as  the  sickly  higgling  of  pro-slavery  fanatics,  or  the 
poorly  disguised  rebel  sympathy  of  sniveling  hypocrites.  We 
must  fight  traitors  where  they  have  chosen  to  meet  us.  They 
have  treated  the  Constitution  as  no  longer  in  force,  and  we  should 
give  them  all  the  consequences,  in  full,  of  their  position.  By 
setting  the  Constitution  at  naught,  they  have  rested  their  case  on 
the  naked  power  of  lawless  might ;  and,  therefore,  we  will  not 
give  them  due  process  of  law,  by  trying,  convicting,  and  hanging 
them  according  to  the  Constitution  they  have  abjured,  but  we  will 
give  them,  abundantly,  due  process  of  tvar,  for  which  the  Consti- 
tution makes  wise  and  ample  provision. 

I  have  referred,  Mr.  Speaker,  to  the  influence  of  slavery  in 
giving  us  false  views  of  the  Constitution.  It  has  also  given  us 
false  ideas  as  to  the  character  and  purposes  of  the  war.  We  are 
fighting,  it  is  said,  for  "the  Union  as  it  was."  Sir,  I  should  be  glad 
to  know  what  we  are  to  understand  by  this.  If  it  means  that 
these  severed  and  belligerent  States  must  again  be  united  as  one 
and  inseparable,  with  secession  forever  laid  low,  the  national 
supremacy  vindicated,  and  the  old  flag  waving  over  every  State 
and  every  rood  of  the  Republic,  then  I  agree  to  the  proposition. 
Every  true  Union  man  will  say  amen  to  it.  But  if,  by  the  Union 
as  it  was,  we  are  to  understand  the  Union  as  we  beheld  it  under 
the  thieving  Democracy  of  the  last  administration,  with  such  men 
as  Davis,  Floyd,  Mason,  and  their  God-forsaken  confederates,  re- 
stored to  their  places  in  Congress,  in  the  army,  and  in  the  Cabi- 
net ;  if  it  means  that  the  reign  of  terror  which  prevailed  in  the 
Southern  States  for  years  prior  to  this  rebellion  shall  be  reestab- 
lished, by  which  unoffending  citizens  of  the  free  States  can  only 
enter  "  the  sacred  soil "  of  slavery  at  the  peril  of  life  ;  if,  by  the 
Union  as  it  was,  be  meant  the  Union  with  another  James  Buchanan 
as  its  king,  and  Chief  Justice  Taney  as  its  anointed  high-priest, 
steadily  gravitating,  by  the  weight  of  its  own  rottenness,  into  the 
frightful  vortex  of  civil  war  ;  then  I  am  not  for  the  Union  as  it 
was,  but  as  I  believe  it  will  be,  when  this  rebellion  shall  have 
worked  out  its  providential  lesson.  I  confess  that  I  look  rather 
to  the  future  than  the  past,  but  if  I  must  cast  my  eye  backward,  I 
shall  select  the  earlv  administrations  of  the  government,  when  the 


CONFISCATION  AND  LIBERATION.  185 

chains  of  the  slave  were  crumbling  from  his  limbs,  and  before  the 
Constitution  of  1789  had  been  mutilated  by  the  servile  Democracy 
of  a  later  generation. 

Mr.  Speaker,  this  clamor  for  the  Union  as  it  was  comes  from 
men  who  believe  in  the  divinity  of  slavery.  It  comes  from  those 
who  would  restore  slavery  in  this  District  if  they  dared  ;  who  would 
put  back  the  chains  upon  every  slave  made  free  by  our  army ; 
who  would  completely  reestablish  the  slave  power  over  the 
National  Government  as  in  the  evil  days  of  the  past,  which  have 
culminated  at  last  in  the  present  bloody  strife,  and  who  are  now 
exhorting  us  to  "  leave  off  agitating  the  negro  question,  and  attend 
to  the  work  of  putting  down  the  rebellion."  Sir,  the  people  of 
the  loyal  States  understand  this  question.  They  know  that  slavery 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  all  our  troubles.  They  know  that  but  for 
that  curse  this  horrid  revolt  against  liberty  and  law  would  not 
have  occurred.  They  know  that  all  the  unutterable  agonies  of 
our  many  battle-fields,  all  the  terrible  sorrows  which  rend  so  many 
thousands  of  loving  hearts,  all  the  ravages  and  desolation  of  this 
stupendous  conflict,  are  to  be  charged  to  slavery.  They  know 
that  its  barbarism  has  moulded  the  leaders  of  this  rebellion  into 
the  most  atrocious  scoundrels  of  the  nineteenth  century,  or  of  any 
century  or  age  of  the  world.  They  know  that  it  gives  arsenic  to 
our  soldiers,  mocks  at  the  agonies  of  wounded  enemies,  fires  on 
defenseless  women  and  children,  plants  torpedoes  and  infernal 
machines  in  its  path,  boils  the  dead  bodies  of  our  soldiers  in  cal- 
drons, so  that  it  may  make  drinking-cups  of  their  skulls,  spurs  of 
their  jaw-bones,  and  finger-joints  as  holiday  presents  for  "  the  first 
families  of  Virginia  "  and  the  "  descendants  of  the  daughter  of 
Pocahontas."  They  know  that  it  has  originated  whole  broods  of 
crimes  never  enacted  in  all  the  ages  of  the  past,  and  that,  were  it 
possible,  Satan  himself  would  now  be  ashamed  of  his  achieve- 
ments, and  seek  a  change  of  occupation.  They  know  that  it 
hatches  into  life,  under  its  infernal  incubation,  the  very  scum  of 
all  the  villainies  and  abominations  that  ever  defied  God  or  cursed 
his  footstool.  And  they  know  that  it  is  just  as  impossible  for 
them  to  pass  through  the  fiery  trials  of  this  war  without  feeling 
that  slavery  is  their  grand  antagonist,  as  it  is  for  a  man  to  hold  his 
breath  and  live. 

Sir,  the  loyal  people  of  these  States  will  not  only  think  about 
slavery,  and  talk  about  it  during  the  progress  of  this  war,  but  they 
will  seek  earnestly  to  use  the  present  opportunity  to  get  rid  of  it 
forever.     Nothing  can  possibly  sanctify  the   trials  and  sufferings 


186  CONFISCATION   AND  LIBERATION. 

through  which  we  are  called  to  pass  but  the  permanent  establish- 
ment of  liberty  and  peace.  If  this  is  not  a  war  of  ideas,  it  is  not 
a  war  to  be  defended.  As  a  mere  struggle  for  political  power 
between  opposing  States,  or  a  mere  question  of  physical  strength 
or  courage,  it  becomes  impious  in  the  light  of  its  horrid  baptism  of 
fire  and  blood.  It  would  rank  with  the  senseless  and  purposeless 
wars  between  the  despotisms  of  the  Old  World,  bringing  with  it 
nothing;  of  good  for  freedom  or  the  race.  What  I  said  on  this 
floor  in  January  last,  I  repeat  here  now,  that  the  mere  suppression 
of  this  rebellion  will  be  an  empty  mockery  of  our  sufferings  and 
sacrifices,  if  slavery  shall  be  spared  to  canker  the  heart  of  the 
nation  anew,  and  repeat  its  diabolical  deeds.  Sir,  the  people  of 
the  United  States,  and  the  armies  of  the  United  States,  are  rot 
the  unreasoning  machines  of  arbitrary  power,  but  the  intelligent 
champions  of  free  institutions,  voluntarily  espousing  the  side  of 
the  Union  upon  principle.  They  know,  as  does  the  civilized  world, 
that  the  rebels  are  fighting  to  diffuse  and  eternize  slavery,  and  that 
that  purpose  must  be  met  by  a  manly  and  conscientious  resistance. 
They  feel,  that 

"  Thrice  is  lie  armed  who  hath  his  quarrel  just," 

and  that  nothing  can  "  ennoble  fight  "  but  a  "  noble  cause."  Mr. 
Speaker,  I  can  conceive  of  nothing  more  monstrously  absurd,  or 
more  flagrantly  recreant,  than  the  idea  of  conducting  this  war 
against  a  slaveholders'  rebellion  as  if  slavery  had  no  existence. 
The  madness  of  such  a  policy  strikes  me  as  next  to  infinite.  Here 
are  more  than  a  million  of  men  called  into  deadly  strife  by  the 
struggle  of  this  Black  Power  to  diffuse  itself  over  the  Continent, 
and  strike  down  the  cause  of  free  government  everywhere,  delug- 
ing these  otherwise  happy  States  with  suffering  and  death  without 
parallel  in  the  history  of  the  world  ;  and  yet  so  far  has  this  power 
perverted  the  judgment  and  debauched  the  conscience  of  the 
country,  that  we  are  seriously  exhorted  to  make  still  greater  sacri- 
fices, in  order  to  placate  its  spirit  and  spare  its  life.  I  thank  God 
that  such  a  policy  is  simply  impossible.  The  hearts  of  the  people 
of  the  free  States,  and  of  the  soldiers  we  have  sent  into  the  field, 
beat  for  liberty  ;  and  without  their  love  of  liberty,  and  the  belief 
that  it  is  now  in  deadly  peril,  the  rebellion  would  have  triumphed, 
just  as  the  struggle  of  our  fathers,  in  1776,  would  have  ended  in 
failure,  if  it  had  been  possible  to  make  them  ignore  the  great 
question  of  human  rights  which  nerved  their  arms  and  fired  their 
hearts. 


CONFISCATION  AND   LIBERATION.  187 

My  colleague  [Mr.  Voorhees],  in  his  speech  the  other  clay, 
was  quite  eloquent  in  his  condemnation  of  the  financial  manage- 
ment of  this  war,  and  quite  painstaking  in  his  effort  to  show  the 
magnitude  of  the  debt  it  is  creating.  He  would  do  well  to  re- 
member that  when  Mr.  Chase  took  charge  of  the  treasury,  the 
government  could  only  borrow  money  by  paying  one  per  cent,  per 
month,  while  United  States  six  per  cent,  bonds  are  iioav  at  two 
per  cent,  premium  over  American  gold.  As  to  the  immense  bur- 
den which  this  war  is  heaping  upon  us,  it  has  been  chiefly  caused 
by  the  mistaken  policy  of  tenderness  toward  the  rebels,  and  im- 
munity for  their  pet  institution ;  and  this  policy  has  been  steadily 
and  strenuously  urged  by  my  colleague  and  his  Democratic  asso- 
ciates. It  has  been  far  less  the  fault  of  the  administration  than  of 
some  of  our  commanding  generals,  and  of  conservative  gentlemen 
in  both  Houses  of  Congress,  who  have  sought  by  every  means  in 
their  power  to  accommodate  the  war  policy  of  the  government  to 
the  equivocal  loyalty  of  the  border  States.  Many  precious  lives, 
and  many  millions  of  money  were  sacrificed,  by  the  military  policy 
which  neither  allowed  the  army  of  the  Potomac  to  march  against 
the  enemy,  nor  go  into  winter  quarters,  during  the  dreary  months 
which  preceded  the  order  of  the  President  directing  a  combined 
movement  on  the  22d  of  February  last.  The  policy  of  delay, 
which  "has  also  sought  to  spare  slavery,  was  never  accepted  by 
the  President  of  his  own  choice,  but  under  the  influence  of  those 
both  in  and  out  of  the  army  in  whom  he  reposed  confidence  at  the 
time. 

I  rejoice  now  to  find  events  all  drifting  in  a  different  direction. 
I  believe  rebels  and  outlaws  are  to  be  dealt  with  according  to  their 
character.  I  trust  slavery  is  not  much  longer  to  be  spared.  Con- 
gress has  already  sanctioned  the  policy  of  gradual  abolition,  as 
recommended  by  the  President,  who  himself  recognizes  slavery  as 
the  grand  obstacle  to  peace.  We  have  abolished  slavery  in  this 
District,  and  thus  branded  it  with  national  reprobation.  We  have 
prohibited  it  in  all  national  territory,  now  owned  or  hereafter  to  be 
acquired.  We  have  enacted  a  new  article  of  war,  prohibiting  our 
army  from  aiding  in  the  recapture  of  fugitives,  and  I  trust  we  shall 
promptly  repeal  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  of  1850,  or  at  least  suspend 
its  operation  during  the  rebellion.  We  have  given  freedom  to 
multitudes  of  slaves  through  our  Confiscation  Act  of  last  July,  and 
by  receiving  them  into  our  camps  and  retaining  them  in  our  ser- 
vice. We  have  enacted  the  Homestead  Bill,  which  at  once  recog- 
nizes the  inalienable  rights  of  the  people  and  the  dignity  of  labor, 


188  CONFISCATION   AND   LIBERATION. 

and  thus  brands  the  slave  power  as  no  act  of  the  nation  ever  did 
before.  Since  that  power  lias  ceased  to  dominate  in  Congress  we 
are  perfecting,  and  shall  soon  pass,  a  bill  for  the  construction  of  a 
Pacific  Railroad,  and  another  for  the  abolition  of  polygamy  in 
Utah.     Our  watchwords  are  now  —  Freedom,  Progress. 

Those  patriotic  gentlemen  who  have  been  anxious  to  hang 
"  abolitionists,"  as  equally  guilty  with  the  rebels,  are  changing 
their  tune.  We  are  reconsidering  the  folly  of  dealing  with  rebels 
as  "  misguided  brethren,"  who  must  not  be  exasperated,  and  while 
we  shall  not  imitate  their  barbarities,  we  are  learning  to  apply  to 
their  case  the  Gospel  of  "  an  eye  for  an  eye,  and  a  tooth  for  a 
tooth."  We  are  waging  war  in  earnest ;  we  are  beo-inning  to  love 
freedom  almost  as  dearly  as  the  rebels  love  slavery  ;  we  are  ani- 
mated by  a  measure  of  that  resentment  which  the  rebellion  de- 
manded in  the  very  beginning,  and  has  constantly  invoked  during 
the  progress  of  the  war  ;  and  when  these  troubles  are  passed  the 
people  will  honor  most  those  who  have  sought  to  crush  the  rebel- 
lion by  the  quickest  and  most  desperate  blows,  and  who,  in  the 
lano'uao-e  of  Governor  Andrew,  of  Massachusetts,  have  been  will- 
ing  to  "  recognize  all  men,  even  black  men,  as  legally  capable  of 
that  loyalty  the  blacks  are  waiting  to  manifest,  and  let  them  fight 
with  God  and  nature  on  their  side."  The  proclamation  of  General 
Fremont,  giving  freedom  to  the  slaves  of  rebels  in  Missouri,  has 
done  more  to  make  his  name  a  household  word  than  could  all  the 
military  glory  of  the  war  ;  and  I  rejoice  that,  while  the  President 
saw  fit  to  revoke  the  recent  sweeping  order  of  General  Hunter,  he 
took  pains  to  couple  that  revocation  with  words  of  earnest  warning 
which  have  neither  meaning  nor  application  if  they  do  not  recog- 
nize the  authority  of  the  Executive,  in  his  military  discretion,  to 
give  freedom  to  the  slaves.  That  this  authority  will  be  executed, 
at  no  very  distant  moment,  I  believe  most  firmly.  The  language 
of  the  President  obviously  implies  it,  and  foreshadows  it  among 
the  thick-coming  events  of  the  future.  Conservatives  and  cow- 
ards may  recoil  from  it,  and  seek  to  postpone  it ;  but  to  resist  it, 
unless  Congress  shall  assume  it,  will  be  to  wrestle  with  destiny. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  shall  support  the  two  measures  of  confiscation 
and  liberation  now  before  us,  for  the  same  reason  which  led  me  to 
support  the  Confiscation  Bill  of  last  July.  They  look  in  the  right 
direction,  and  I  am  glad  to  see  any  advance  step  taken  by  Con- 
gress. But  I  shall  retain,  at  any  rate,  my  faith  in  the  President, 
and  in  that  logic  of  events  which  shows,  amid  all  the  seeming  tri- 
umphs of  slavery,  that  the  anti-slavery  idea  has  been  steadily  and 


CONFISCATION   AND  LIBERATION.  189 

surely  marching  toward  its  triumph.  The  victories  of  slavery, 
in  fact,  have  been  its  defeats.  It  triumphed  in  the  Missouri  Com- 
promise of  1820  ;  but  that  triumph,  by  begetting  new  exactions, 
kindled  and  diffused  an  unslumbering  anti-slavery  sentiment  which 
kept  pace  with  every  usurpation  of  its  foe.  It  triumphed  in  the 
annexation  of  Texas  ;  but  this,  by  paving  the  way  for  the  Mexican 
War,  more  fully  displayed  its  spirit  of  rapacity,  and  led  to  an 
organized  political  action  against  it  which  finally  secured  the  con- 
trol of  the  government.  It  triumphed  in  1850,  in  the  passage  of 
the  Fugitive  Slave  Act,  the  Texas  Boundary  Bill,  the  overthrow  of 
the  TVilmot  Proviso,  and  the  inauguration  of  the  policy  of  popular 
sovereignty  in  our  Territories,  which  afterwards  brought  forth  such 
bloody  fruits  in  Kansas.  But  these  measures,  instead  of  glutting 
the  demands  of  slavery,  only  whetted  its  appetite,  and  brought 
upon  it  the  roused  and  intensified  hostility  of  the  people.  It  tri- 
umphed in  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Restriction  ;  but  this  was, 
perhaps,  the  most  signal  defeat  in  the  whole  history  of  its  career 
of  aggression  and  lawlessness,  completely  unmasking  its  real  char- 
acter and  designs,  and  appealing  to  both  conservatives  and  radicals 
to  combine  against  it.  It  triumphed  again  in  the  Dred  Scott  de- 
cision and  the  election  of  James  Buchanan  as  President ;  but  this 
only  enabled  slave-breeding  Democracy  to  grow  to  its  full  stature, 
and  bud  and  blossom  into  that  perfect  luxuriance  of  diabolism 
through  which  the  Republican  party  mounted  to  power.  Slavery 
triumphed,  finally,  when  it  clutched  the  national  treasury,  sent  our 
navy  into  distant  seas,  plundered  our  arsenals,  fired  on  our  flag, 
and  sought  to  make  sure  its  dominion  by  wholesale  perjury,  treason, 
rapine,  and  murder ;  but  all  this  was  only  a  grand  challenge  to 
the  nation  to  meet  it  in  mortal  combat,  giving  us  the  right  to 
choose  any  weapons  recognized  by  the  laws  of  civilized  warfare. 
Baffled  and  overborne  in  all  its  previous  encounters,  slavery  has 
now  forced  upon  the  nation  the  question  of  liberty  or  death  ;  and 
I  cannot  doubt  that  the  triumphs  of  freedom  thus  far  will  be 
crowned  by  final  victory  in  this  grand  struggle.  The  cost  of  our 
victory,  in  treasure  and  blood,  and  the  length  of  the  struggle,  will 
depend  much  upon  the  madness  or  the  wisdom  which  may  dictate 
our  policy  ;  but  I  am  sure  that  our  country  is  not  so  far  given 
over  to  the  care  of  devils  as  to  allow  slavery  to  come  out  of  this 
contest  with  its  life.  To  believe  this,  would  be  to  take  sides  with 
"  the  fool,"  who  "  hath  said  in  his  heart  there  is  no  God." 

The  triumph  of  anti-slavery  is  sure.  In  the  day  of  its  weak- 
ness, it  faced  proscription,  persecution,  violence,  and  death,  but  it 
never  deserted  its  flag.     It  was  opposed  by  public  opinion,  by  the 


190  CONFISCATION   AND   LIBERATION. 

press,  the  religious  organizations  of  the  country,  and  by  great 
political  parties  which  it  finally  rent  in  twain  and  trampled  under 
its  feet.  It  is  now  the  master  of  its  own  position,  while  its  early 
heroes  are  taking  their  rank  among  "  the  noble  of  all  ages."  It 
has  forced  its  way  into  the  Presidential  chair,  and  rules  in  the 
Cabinet.  It  dictates  the  legislation  of  Congress,  and  speaks  in  the 
courts  of  the  Old  World.  It  goes  forth  with  our  armies,  and  is 
every  hour  more  and  more  imbuing  the  soldiers  of  the  Republic 
with  its  spirit.     Its  course  is  onward,  and  while 

"  The  politic  statesman  looks  back  with  a  sigh, 
There  is  doubt  in  his  heart,  there  is  fear  in  his  eye ;  " 

and  even  those  slimy  doughfaces  and  creeping  things  that  still  con- 
tinue to  hiss  at  "abolitionism,"  betray  a  tormenting  apprehension 
that  their  day  and  generation  are  rapidly  passing  away.  In  the 
light  of  the  past  the  future  is  made  so  plain  that  "  he  that  runs 
may  read."  In  the  year  1850,  when  the  slave  power  triumphed 
through  the  "  final  settlement "  which  was  then  attempted,  I  had 
the  honor  to  hold  a  seat  in  this  body  ;  and  I  said,  in  a  speech  then 
delivered,  that  — 

"  The  suppression  of  agitation  in  the  non-slaveholding  States  "will  not  and 
cannot  follow  the  '  peace  measures  '  recently  adopted.  The  alleged  death  of 
the  "Wilmot  Proviso  will  only  prove  the  death  of  those  who  have  sought  to 
kill  it,  while  its  advocates  will  be  multiplied  in  every  portion  of  the  North. 
The  covenant  for  the  admission  of  additional  slave  States  will  be  repudiated, 
while  a  renewed  and  constantly  increasing  agitation  will  spring  up  in  behalf 
of  the  doctrine  of  '  No  more  slave  States.'  The  outrage  of  surrendering  free 
soil  to  Texan  slavery  cannot  fail  to  be  followed  by  the  same  results,  and  just 
as  naturally  as  fuel  feeds  the  flame  which  consumes  it.  The  passage  of  the 
Fugitive  Slave  Bill  will  open  a  fresh  wound  in  the  North,  and  it  will  continue 
to  bleed  just  as  long  as  the  law  stands  unrepealed.  The  existence  of  slavery 
in  the  capital  of  the  Republic,  upheld  by  the  laws  of  Congress,  must,  of  itself, 
keep  alive  an  agitation  which  will  be  swelled  with  the  continuance  of  the  evil. 
Sir,  these  questions  are  no  longer  within  the  control  of  politicians.  Party 
discipline,  Presidential  nominations,  and  the  spoils  of  office,  cannot  stifle  the 
free  utterance  of  the  people  respecting  the  great  struggle  now  going  on  in  this 
country  between  the  free  spirit  of  the  North  and  a  domineering  oligarchy  in 
the  South.  Here,  sir,  lies  the  great  question,  and  it  must  be  met.  Neither 
acts  of  Congress  nor  the  devices  of  partisans  can  postpone  or  evade  it.  It 
will  have  itself  answered.  I  am  aware  that  it  involves  the  bread  and  butter 
of  whole  hosts  of  politicians  ;  and  I  do  not  marvel  at  their  attempts  to  escape 
it,  to  smother  it,  to  hide  it  from  the  eyes  of  the  people,  and  to  dam  up  the 
moral  tide  which  is  forcing  it  upon  them.  Neither  do  I  marvel  at  their  firing 
of  guns  and  bacchanalian  libations  over  '  the  dead  body  of  the  Wilmot.'  Such 
labors  and  rejoicings  are  by  no  means  unnatural,  but  they  will  be  followed  by 
disappointment.  It  is  vain  to  expect  to  quiet  agitation  by  continued  conces- 
sions to  an  institution  which  is  becoming  every  hour  more  and  more  a  stigma 
upon  the  nation,  and  which,  instead  of  seeking   new  conquests  and  new  life, 


CONFISCATION  AND  LIBERATION.  191 

should  be  preparing  itself  with  grave-clothes  for  a  decent  exit  from  the  world  ; 
—  concessions  revolting  to  the  humanity,  the  conscientious  convictions,  the  re- 
ligion, and  the  patriotism  of  the  free  States." 

Sir,  I  speak  to-day  in  the  spirit  of  these  words,  uttered  nearly 
twelve  years  ago,  and  verified  by  time.  A  small  band  of  men  in 
Congress  then  braved  public  opinion,  the  ruling  influences  of  the 
time,  and  every  form  of  proscription  and  intimidation,  in  standing 
by  the  cause  which  was  overwhelmingly  voted  down.  But  al- 
though outvoted,  it  was  not  conquered.  "  It  is  in  vain,"  says  Car- 
lyle,  "  to  vote  a  false  image  true.  Vote  it,  and  revote  it,  by  over- 
whelming majorities,  by  jubilant  unanimities,  the  thing  is  not  so; 
it  is  othemvise  thanso,  and  all  Adam's  posterity,  voting  upon  it  till 
doomsday,  cannot  change  it." 

The  history  of  reform  bears  unfailing  witness  to  this  truth. 
The  cause  which  bore  the  cross  in  1850,  wears  the  crown  to-day. 
"  No  power  can  die  that  ever  wrought  for  truth,"  while  the  polit- 
ical graves  of  recreant  statesmen  are  eloquent  with  warnings 
against  their  mistakes.  Where  are  those  Northern  statesmen  who 
betrayed  liberty  in  1820  ?  They  are  already  forgotten,  orTemem- 
bered  only  in  their  dishonor.  Who  now  believes  that  any  fresh 
laurels  were  won  in  1850,  by  the  great  men  who  sought  to  gag 
the  people  of  the  free  States  and  lay  the  slab  of  silence  on  those 
truths  which  to-day  write  themselves  down,  along  with  the  guilt 
of  slavery,  in  the  flames  of  civil  war  ?  Has  any  man  in  the  whole 
history  of  American  politics,  however  deeply  rooted  his  reputation 
or  God-like  his  gifts,  been  able  to  hold  dalliance  with  slavery  and 
live?  I  believe  the  spirit  of  liberty  is  the  spirit  of  God,  and  if 
the  giants  of  a  past  generation  were  not  strong  enough  to  wrestle 
with  it,  can  the  pigmies  of  the  present  ?  It  has  been  beautifully 
said  of  Wilberforce,  that  he  "  ascended  to  the  throne  of  God  with 
a  million  of  broken  shackles  in  his  hands,  as  the  evidence  of  a  life 
well  spent."  History  will  take  care  of  his  memory  ;  and  when 
our  own  bleeding  country  shall  again  put  on  the  robes  of  peace, 
and  freedom  shall  have  leave  to  gather  up  her  jewels,  she  will  not 
search  for  them  among  the  political  fossils  who  are  now  seeking  to 
spare  the  rebels  by  pettifogging  their  £ause  in  the  name  of  the 
Constitution,  while  the  slave  power  is  feeling  for  the  nation's 
throat.  No  ;  God  is  not  to  be  mocked.  Justice  is  sure.  The 
defenders  of  slavery  and  its  despicable  apologists  will  be  nailed  to 
the  world's  pillory,  and  the  holiest  shrines  in  the  temple  of  Amer- 
ican liberty  will  be  reserved  for  those  who  shall  most  faithfully  do 
battle  against  this  rebellion,  as  a  gigantic  conspiracy  against  the 
rights  of  human  nature  and  the  brotherhood  of  our  race. 


THE   REBELLION  —  THE   MISTAKES   OF   THE 
PAST  — THE    DUTY   OF   THE  PRESENT. 

HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES,  FEBRUARY  18,  18G3. 

[This  general  review  of  the  political  and  military  situation  forms  an  interesting 
chapter  in  the  history  of  the  times  covered  by  it,  while  its  remorseless  arraignment  of 
"Democratic  policy"  was  based  upon  facts  supplied  by  the  investigations  of  the  Com- 
mittee on  the  Conduct  of  the  War,  of  which  Mr.  Julian  was  a  member.  This  com- 
mittee rendered  the  country  a  real  and  great  service,  and  is  understood  to  have  been 
largely  instrumental  in  superseding  General  McClellan,  and  in  inaugurating  the 
more  vigorous  policy  of  the  war  which  followed.] 

Mr.  Speaker,  —  The  line  of  argument  I  propose  to  pursue 
during  the  hour  which  belongs  to  me  is  general  in  its  character, 
and  wil]gnot  specially  refer  to  the  measure  now  pending  before  the 
House.1  It  will  not,  however,  be  found  substantially  irrelevant  to 
the  subject ;  and  as  I  have  already  waited  several  weeks  for  the 
floor,  and  the  widest  latitude  has  thus  far  been  allowed  in  this 
debate,  I  trust  I  shall  be  permitted  to  proceed  without  encounter- 
ing any  very  strict  construction  of  the  rules  of  order  provided  for 
the  government  of  this  body. 

In  seeking  to  interpret  the  terrible  conflict  through  which  our 
country  is  passing,  and  to  devise,  if  possible,  a  just  and  wise  policy 
for  the  government  in  its  future  action,  the  mind  naturally  reverts 
to  the  past.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  it  is  well  to  let  by-gones 
be  by-gones,  but  we  can  never  afford  to  dispense  with  the  lessons 
of  experience.  By  an  eternal  law,  as  unvarying  in  politics  as  in 
morals,  to-day  is  made  the  child  of  yesterday  and  the  parent  of 
to-morrow,  —  the  past  and  the  present  linked  together  in  the  re- 
lation of  cause  and  effect,  and  irrevocably  woven  into  the  future. 
It  is  true  philosophy,  therefore,  to  profit  by  our  mistakes,  to  the 
extent  of  shunning  their  repetition,  while  causing  the  past  to  re- 
appear where  its  deeds  have  been  worthy. 

The  triumph  of  the  Republican  Party  in  1860  was  the  triumph 

of  freedom  over  slavery.     I  do  not  say  that  all  who  supported 

Abraham  Lincoln  were  abolitionists,  or  even  anti-slavery  men,  or 

that  all  who  opposed  him  were  the  advocates  of  slavery.     This 

1  The  bill  to  indemnify  the  President  by  suspending  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus. 


THE   REBELLION.  193 

would  be  very  far  from  the  exact  truth.  What  I  affirm  is,  that 
hostility  to  slavery  was  the  animating  sentiment  of  the  men  Avhose 
deeply-rooted  convictions  and  unquenchable  zeal  made  the  forma- 
tion of  the  Republican  party  a  necessity,  and  nerved  it  with  all  its 
real  strength  ;  while  on  the  other  hand,  the  espousal  of  slavery  was 
the  grand  and  darling  purpose  of  those  whose  shaping  hand  and  in- 
spiring ambition  gave  life  and  law  to  the  Democratic  organization. 

I  go  further  still.  The  contest  of  1860  was  not  simply  a 
struggle  between  slavery  and  freedom,  but  a  struggle  of  life  and 
death.  Slavery,  as  a  system  of  unskilled  labor,  demands  the 
right  of  unrestricted  extension  over  fresh  soil,  as  a  condition  of  its 
life.  This  is  a  law  of  its  nature,  attested  by  the  Seminole  and 
Florida  wars,  the  seizure  of  Texas,  the  war  with  Mexico,  the 
repeal  of  the  Missouri  Restriction,  the  raid  into  Kansas,  and  by  its 
entire  history  in  this  country.  Confine  it  by  impassable  bound- 
aries, and  it  will  turn  upon  and  devour  its  own  life.  Slaveholders 
understand  this  perfectly,  and  I  do  not  marvel  that  their  hostility 
was  not  assuaged  in  the  smallest  degree  by  the  Republican  dogma 
of  non-interference  with  it  in  the  States.  They  knew  that  the 
exclusion  of  it  from  all  federal  territory  would  not  only  put  the 
nation's  brand  upon  it  in  the  States  which  it  scourges,  and  condemn 
it  as  a  public  enemy,  but  virtually  sentence  it  to  death.  They 
believed,  with  our  Republican  fathers,  that  restriction  means  de- 
struction. They  knew  that  as  the  first  dose  of  medicine  given  to 
a  sick  man  forms  a  part  of  the  whole  process  of  cure,  so  the  policy 
of  limitation,  as  an  incipient  remedy  for  our  great  national  malady, 
would  be  followed  by  other  measures,  moral,  economical,  and  polit- 
ical, which  would  ultimately  but  surely  expel  it  from  the  country. 
Hence  they  fought  Republicanism  with  all  the  zeal  and  desperation 
which  could  be  inspired  by  a  great  social  and  moneyed  power, 
threatened  with  suffocation  and  death.  They  were  simply  obey- 
ing the  law  of  self-preservation  ;  and  I  think  it  due  to  frankness  to 
confess  that  the  charge  of  "abolitionism,"  which  they  incessantly 
hurled  at  the  Republican  party,  was  by  no  means  totally  wanting 
in  essential  truth.  When  they  were  vanquished  in  the  election  of 
Mr.  Lincoln,  their  appeal  from  the  ballot  to  the  bullet  was  the 
logical  sequence  of  their  insane  devotion  to  slavery,  and  their  con- 
viction that  nothing  could  save  it  but  the  ruin  of  the  Republic. 

Such  was  the  issue  decided  by  the  people  in  the  last  Presidential 
canvass.  It  was  the  long-postponed  battle  between  slavery  and 
anti-slavery,  fairly  encountering  each  other  at  the  ballot-box.  It 
was  a  struggle  between  two  intensely  hostile  ideas,  wrestling  for 

13 


194:  THE   REBELLION. 

the  final  mastery  of  the  Republic.  Freedom,  through  the  Repub- 
lican party  as  its  instrument,  triumphed  over  slavery,  with  both 
wings  of  the  Democratic  party  as  its  servants  and  tools ;  for  the 
distinction  between  Breckinridge  Democracy  and  Douglas  Democ- 
racy was  purely  metaphysical,  and  eluded,  entirely,  the  plain  com- 
mon sense  of  honest  men. 

Now,  sir,  I  hold  that  the  people  of  the  United  States,  who 
earned  and  fairly  achieved  this  great  victory,  had  a  vested  right  to 
its  fruits.  They  had  a  right  to  expect  that  the  domination  of  slav- 
ery over  the  National  Government  would  cease.  They  had  a  right 
to  demand  that  all  its  departments  should  be  committed  to  the 
hands  of  those  who  believed  in  the  grand  Idea  on  which  the  admin- 
istration ascended  to  power.  And  the  intervention  of  the  rebellion 
in  no  degree  whatever  released  the  government  from  its  duty  in 
this  respect.  The  rebellion  did  not  refute,  but  confirmed,  the  truth 
of  Republicanism.  It  was  simply  a  final  chapter  in  the  history  of 
the  Slave  Power,  an  advanced  stage  of  slaveholding  rapacity,  nat- 
urally  born  of  Democratic  misrule  ;  and  instead  of  tempting  us  to 
cower  before  it  and  surrender  our  principles,  it  furnished  an  over- 
whelming argument  in  favor  of  standing  by  them  to  the  death. 

I  do  not  say  that  no  man  who  had  been  identified  with  the 
Democratic  party  should  have  been  appointed  to  office,  but  that  no 
man  who  regarded  with  indifference  the  great  principle  which  had 
triumphed  in  the  canvass  ;  no  man,  certainly,  who  was  known  to 
be  hostile  to  that  principle,  should  have  been  allowed  to  hold  any 
federal  office,  high  or  low,  civil  or  military,  at  home  or  abroad. 
This  was  the  duty  of  the  administration,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
it  could  not  decline  it  with  fidelity  to  the  people  who  had  installed 
it  in  power.  The  Republican  principle  was  as  true  after  the  elec- 
tion as  during  the  canvass ;  as  true  in  the  midst  of  war  as  in  sea- 
sons of  peace  ;  and  just  so  for  as  we  have  lost  sight  of  this  truth, 
iust  so  far  have  we  strayed  from  the  path  of  safety.  Indeed,  in- 
stead of  putting  our  principles  in  abeyance  when  the  storm  of  war 
came,  we  should  have  clung  to  them  with  a  redoubled  energy  and. 
a  dedicated  zeal.  Instead  of  making  terms  with  our  vanquished 
opponents  by  conferring  upon  them  office  and  power,  we  should 
have  taught  them  that  these  were  necessarily  forfeited  in  our  tri- 
umph. And  we  should  have  remembered  that  even  our  enemies 
would  brand  us  as  hypocrites  and  coAvards,  if  the  administration 
should  be  less  distinctively  Republican  in  principle  and  policy  than 
had  been  the  party  which  created  it. 

Very  nearly  allied  to  the  policy  of  conciliating  our    opponents 


THE   REBELLION.  195 

and  thus  building  up  tlieir  power,  was  the  project  of  a  Union  party, 
encouraged  by  Republican  politicians  simultaneously  with  the  be- 
ginning of  this  administration.  Such  a  movement,  started  soon 
after  a  heated  political  canvass  involving  the  issue  of  slavery  and 
anti-slavery,  was  utterly  preposterous.  The  wrar  grew  out  of  the 
very  question  which  had  organized  our  parties  and  marshaled  them 
against  each  other  in  time  of  peace  ;  and  hence,  instead  of  melting 
and  fusing  them  into  one,  their  lines  of  division  would  be  brought 
out  all  the  more  palpably,  and  their  antagonisms  all  the  more  inten- 
sified. It  was  incredible  that  pro-slavery  Democracy,  after  having 
been  so  thoroughly  drugged  and  surfeited  with  the  heresies  of 
Southern  rebels,  should,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  enter  into  cor- 
dial union  with  the  men  it  had  so  long  traduced.  What  is  now 
palpable  to  all  men,  I  thought  obvious  in  the  beginning:  that  a 
union  of  Republicans  and  Democrats,  on  the  single  question  of  put- 
ting down  the  rebellion,  ignoring  the  real  issue  out  of  which  it 
sprang,  was  simply  a  shallow  expedient  for  dividing  the  spoils  of 
office,  at  the  cost  of  a  practical  surrender  of  the  principles  for  which 
Republicans  had  so  zealously  contended.  I  do  not  say  that  the 
disruption  of  the  Democratic  party  was  by  any  means  impossible. 
There  was  a  vigorous  loyal  element  pervading  its  rank  and  file 
which  its  unprincipled  leadership  would  have  been  powerless  to 
control,  if  Republicans  had  stood  firm.  If  we  had  been  perfectly 
true  to  our  own  principles,  bating  no  jot  of  zeal  in  their  mainte- 
nance, and  frowning  upon  any  movement  which  sought  to  soften 
down  or  shade  off  the  right-angled  character  of  our  anti-slavery 
policy  ;  if  we  had  bravely  accepted  the  consequences  of  that  policy, 
branding  the  rebellion  as  the  child  of  slavery,  and  the  Democratic 
party  as  the  great  nursing  mother  that  had  fed  and  pampered  it 
into  this  bloody  revolt  against  the  Constitution  ;  if,  when  the  truth 
of  our  doctrines  and  the  guilt  of  our  opponents  were  written  down 
in  the  fires  of  civil  war,  we  had  called  upon  all  men  to  join  hands 
with  us  in  saving  the  country,  the  Democratic  party  would  have 
heard  its  death-knell  in  the  guns  of  Fort  Sumter,  and  instead  of 
borrowing  new  life  from  the  cowardice  and  decline  of  Republican- 
ism, would  have  crawled  to  its  guilty  and  dishonored  grave.  Only 
by  persistent  fidelity  to  our  own  principles  could  we  hope  either  to 
break  down  the  power  of  our  foes  or  maintain  a  real  Union  move- 
ment. This  we  already  had  in  the  Republican  party.  If  there  is 
anywhere  a  Republican  who  is  not  a  Union  man  I  would  be  glad 
to  know  where  he  may  be  found.  This  accursed  war  is  upon  us 
to-day  because  the  policy  of  the  government,  under  the  rule  of 


196  THE   REBELLION. 

slave-breeding  Democracy,  has  so  long  been  drifting  from  the  prin- 
ciples of  our  Republican  fathers,  as  reaffirmed  in  the  Philadelphia 
and  Chicago  platforms.  The  rebellion  is  a  fulfilled  prophecy  of 
Thomas  Jefferson,  and  of  all  the  leading  anti-slavery  men  of  a 
later  generation  ;  and  nothing,  certainly,  should  have  been  further 
from  our  purpose  than  to  rush  with  indecent  haste  into  the  embrace 
of  unrepentant  Democrats,  when  the  very  life  of  the  nation  had 
been  brought  into  deadly  peril  by  their  systematic  recreancy  to  the 
principles  of  real  Democracy. 

Sir,  Democratic  policy  not  only  gave  birth  to  the  rebellion,  but 
Democrats,  and  only  Democrats,  are  in  arms  against  their  coun- 
try. Democrats  fired  on  its  flag  at  Fort  Sumter.  Jefferson  Davis 
is  a  Democrat,  and  so  is  every  God-forsaken  rebel  at  his  heels. 
A  Democratic  administration  was  in  power  when  the  rebellion  first 
lifted  its  head.  A  Democratic  President,  who  could  have  nipped 
it  in  the  bud,  allowed  our  navy  to  be  sent  to  distant  seas,  our 
fortresses  to  be  occupied,  our  arsenals  and  navy-yards  to  be  seized, 
and  our  arms  and  munitions  to  be  stolen.  Democrats  clutched 
the  treasury  of  the  government  and  robbed  it  of  its  Indian  bonds. 
The  distinguished  thieves  and  cut-throats  who  are  known  as  the 
leaders  of  the  rebellion,  such  as  Floyd,  Thompson,  Yancey,  and 
Cobb,  are  all  Democrats.  Not  only  is  it  true  that  rebels  are  Dem- 
ocrats, but  so  are  rebel  sympathizers,  whether  in  the  North  or 
the  South.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Republican  party,  so  far  as  I 
can  learn,  has  not  furnished  a  single  recruit  to  the  ranks  of  the 
rebellion.  Loyalty  and  Republicanism  go  hand  in  hand  through- 
out the  Union,  as  perfectly  as  treason  and  slavery. 

In  the  light  of  these  pregnant  facts,  Mr.  Chairman,  we  find  no 
occasion  for  a  new  party.  What  we  should  work  and  pray  for  is 
the  success  of  our  principles,  and  this  can  only  be  secured  by  stead- 
fastness of  purpose  and  associated  political  action.  We  need  some- 
thing of  permanence  in  our  movements,  shunning  that  fickleness 
and  instability  that  would  form  a  new  party,  with  a  new  name,  for 
every  campaign,  and  thus  fritter  away  our  strength  in  the  fickle- 
ness of  our  schemes,  instead  of  husbanding  it  for  effective  service. 
Republicanism  is  not  like  a  garment,  to  be  put  on  or  laid  aside  for 
our  own  convenience,  but  an  enduring  principle,  which  can  never 
be  abandoned  without  faithlessness  to  the  country.  It  is  not  a  suc- 
cession of  "  dissolving  views,"  brought  on  to  the  political  stage  to 
amuse  conservative  gentlemen,  or  to  dazzle  and  bewilder  the  peo- 
ple, but  the  fixed  star  which  should  guide  us  through  the  shifting 
phases  of  American  politics  and  the  bloodv  labyrinths  of  war.    Sir, 


THE   REBELLION.  197 

not  even  to  save  the  Union,  or  to  restore  the  blessings  of  peace, 
should  we  forsake  its  light.  It  is  because  we  loved  our  principles 
more  than  peace  that  we  are  now  in  the  midst  of  war.  We  de- 
manded a  Union  under  conditions  that  would  make  it  the  servant 
of  liberty,  and  not  the  handmaid  of  slavery,  and  the  rebellion  is 
the  result.  Let  us  accept  it ;  and  when  we  are  charged  with  pro- 
ducing it,  let  us  reply  that  the  charge,  if  true  at  all,  is  true  in  a 
sense  which  makes  infamous  the  men  who  prefer  it.  In  the  sense 
in  which  the  opponents  of  paganism  caused  martyrdoms  in  the 
early  days  of  the  Church  ;  in  the  sense  in  which  the  enemies  of 
the  papal  power  in  the  time  of  Luther  caused  persecutions  and 
death  ;  in  the  sense  in  which  Thomas  Jefferson  and  the  fathers 
caused  the  war  of  our  Revolution,  we,  who  are  called  Republicans, 
caused  the  rebellion,  of  which  pro-slavery  Democracy  is  preemi- 
nently guilty.  If  we  had  allowed  slavery  to  take  root  in  the  soil  of 
Kansas,  without  resistance  or  protest ;  if  we  had  permitted  it, 
through  the  help  of  the  Supreme  Court,  to  fasten  its  fangs  upon  all 
our  Territories,  so  that  neither  Congress,  nor  the  people,  nor  any 
human  power  could  remove  it ;  if  we  had  allowed  it  to  go  freely 
into  the  non-slaveholding  States,  and  set  up  its  habitation  in  defi- 
ance of  State  enactments  ;  if  we  had  consented  to  the  revival  of  the 
African  slave-trade,  and  that  our  lips  should  be  sealed  against  the 
right  to  talk  about  it,  except  to  talk  in  its  favor  ;  if,  in  a  word,  the 
people  of  the  free  States  had  been  willing  to  trample  under  their 
feet  the  institutions  of  their  fathers,  and  to  dedicate  this  Continent  to 
slaveholding  and  slave-breeding  forever,  then  we  might  have  had 
peace  to-day,  and  an  unbroken  Union.  But  our  Democratic  peace 
would  have  been  the  peace  of  the  Pit,  "  stifling,  suffocating,  sultry," 
—  a  peace  infinitely  more  dreadful  than  the  war  we  have  chosen  to 
accept  in  the  maintenance  of  our  principles  ;  and  our  Union  would 
have  been  a  confederacy  of*corsairs,  devouring  humanity,  defying 
God,  exalting  the  devil,  and  gladdening  the  heart  of  every  abso- 
lutist and  tyrant  throughout  the  earth.  Sir,  I  rejoice  greatly  that 
Republicans  had  the  courage  to  throw  themselves  between  their 
country  and  the  eternal  damnation  to  which  Democratic  policy 
was  about  to  consign  it ;  and  that  now,  standing  face  to  face  with 
the  dread  realities  of  war,  they  are  still  resolved  to  stand  together 
by  the  flag-staff  of  freedom.  No  step  backward  is  possible,  nor 
was  there  any  hope  for  the  Republic  so  long  as  the  government 
and  its  advisers  failed  to  realize  this  fact. 

Mr.  Chairman,  I  have  indicated,  in  general  terms,  the  mistakes 
of  Republican  policy  since  the  beginning  of  the  war.    Many  of  our 


198  THE   REBELLION. 

trusted  leaders  have  lost  their  way,  while  the  administration  itself 
has  not  been  thoroughly  Republican  in  its  policy.     Forgetting  the 
mere  negations  of  our  creed,  it  should  have  planted  itself  bravely 
on  its  affirmations,  pausing  not  a  moment  to  apologize,  or  deprecate, 
or  explain.     The  crisis  called  for  absolute  courage,  and  the  time 
had  gone  by  forever  for  any  policy  savoring,  in  the  smallest  degree, 
of  timidity  or  hesitation.    The  disasters  of  this  war,  and  the  perils 
which  now  threaten  the  country,  find  their  best  explanation  in  the 
failure  of  the  government  to  stand  by  its  friends,  and  its  readiness 
to  strengthen  the  hands  of  its  foes.     To  a  fearful  extent  Demo- 
cratic   ideas    and    Democratic    policy  have   ruled  this  Republican 
administration  from  the  beginning.     Democratic  policy,  very  soon 
after  the  war  began,  speaking  through  our  Republican  Secretary  of. 
State,  declared  that  "  the  Federal  Government  could  not  reduce 
the  seceding  States  to  obedience  by  conquest,"  and  that  "  only  an 
imperial  or  despotic  government  could  subjugate  thoroughly  disaf- 
fected and  insurrectionary  members  of  the  State  ; "  persuaded  the 
nations  of  the  earth  that  our  struggle  was  not  an  "  irrepressible 
conflict"  between  two  forms  of  society,  each  of  which  was  aiming 
at  absolute  dominion  over  the  country,  but  a  mere  domestic  tumult 
which  would  subside  in  "  sixty  days  ;  "  and  that  the  institution  of 
slavery,  which  the  whole  world  now  confesses  to  have  been  the 
cause  of  the  war,  would  not  be  affected  by  it,  but  "  remain  subject 
to  exactly  the  same  laws  and  forms  of  administration,  whether  the 
revolution  shall  succeed  or  whether  it  shall  fail."    Democratic  pol- 
icy, pouring  its  cowardly  counsels  into  the  ear  of  the  Commander- 
in-chief  of  our  armies,  tempted  him  to  write  a  letter  to  Secretary 
Seward,  on  the  day  before  Mr.  Lincoln's  inauguration,  in  which  he 
scouted  the  idea  of  subduing  the  rebel  States  by  military  power, 
favored  the  organization  of  a  Union  party  and  the  abandonment  of 
Republicanism,  and    recommended   a   pacification   on   the  godless 
basis  of  the   Crittenden  Resolves   of  January,  1861 ;  or  that  we 
should  say  to  our  "  wayward  sisters,  go  in  peace."     Democratic 
policy  made   General  McClellan  Commander-in-chief,   by  falsely 
claiming  for  him  the  victories  of  our  armies  in  Western  Virginia, 
achieved  by  Rosecranz,  Morris,  and  Benham,  and  by  the  indorse- 
ment of  General  Scott,  who,  as  the  country  has  since  learned,  did 
not  believe  in  the  war  which  the    government  had  inaugurated. 
Democratic  policy,  through  General  Patterson  as  its  representa- 
tive, detained   a  large  army  in  the  valley, of  Winchester   which 
should  have   marched  against  General  Johnston  and  his  inferior 
force,  instead  of  allowing  him  to  join  Beauregard  at  Bull    Run, 


THE   REBELLION.  199 

thus  securing  the  defeat  and  rout  of  our  army,  instead  of  a  de- 
cisive victory,  which  else  would  have  crowned  our  arms.  Demo- 
cratic policy,  through  the  authority  of  General  McClellan,  kept 
the  Potomac  blockaded  during  the  fall  and  winter  of  1861  and 
1862  ;  and  when  the  Navy  Department  insisted,  as  it  did  repeatedly, 
on  putting  an  end  to  the  blockade,  which  it  could  have  done  at  any 
moment,  our  Democratic  General  objected,  that  "  it  would  bring 
on  a  general  engagement ;  "  and  thus  was  the  honor  of  the  nation 
compromised,  and  millions  sacrificed  through  its  interrupted  com- 
merce, without  cause  or  excuse.  Democratic  policy,  personified 
by  General  McClellan  and  General  Stone,  sent  Colonel  Baker  and 
his  gallant  men  across  the  Potomac  against  a  superior  force,  with 
one  scow  and  two  small  boats  as  the  only  means  of  transportation ; 
and  after  the  crossing  had  commenced,  twenty-four  thousand  men 
under  General  Smith  and  General  McCall,  who  were  within  strik- 
ing distance,  and  expected  by  Colonel  Baker  to  join  him,  were 
ordered  to  retreat  by  General  McClellan  ;  while  fifteen  hundred  of 
our  men  at  Edwards'  Ferry,  only  three  and  a  half  miles  from  the 
battle-field,  who  could  have  reinforced  Colonel  Baker  and  turned 
the  fortunes  of  the  day,  were  compelled  to  stand  idle  while  the 
gallant  hero  and  his  men  were  butchered  without  mercy.  During 
the  autumn  and  winter  months  which  followed,  Democratic  policy 
made  the  grand  army  of  the  Potomac  squat  before  the  wooden 
guns  of  Centreville  and  Manassas ;  and  although  our  forces  were 
many  times  larger  than  those  of  the  rebels,  and  our  men  in  fine 
health  and  discipline,  and  eager  to  fight,  while  during  these  succes- 
sive months  we  were  favored  with  solid  roads  and  clear  frosty  days 
and  nights,  yet  neither  the  persuasions  of  the  President  nor  the 
clamors  of  the  people  could  induce  General  McClellan  to  move ; 
nor  did  any  member  of  the  Cabinet,  nor  the  President  himself, 
nor  any  general  in  his  army,  know  his  plans,  or  why  our  forces  did 
not  advance.  Democratic  policy,  refusing  to  allow  our  armies  to 
go  into  winter  quarters  or  to  march  upon  the  enemy,  kept  them 
strictly  on  the  defensive  throughout  the  Union,  till  the  President, 
in  the  latter  part  of  January  of  last  year,  gave  the  order  fonvard, 
resulting  in  the  victories  of  Fort  Henry,  Fort  Donelson,  and  New- 
born, which  so  electrified  the  country.  The  army  of  the  Potomac 
was  required  to  march  on  the  22d  of  February,  but  Democratic 
policy  held  it  inactive  till  the  10th  of  March,  when  General  McClel- 
lan, in  obedience  to  a  peremptory  order  of  the  President,  took  up 
the  line  of  mai'ch  toward  Centreville,  after  having  first  learned 
that  the  rebels  had  retired  toward  the  Rappahannock.     This  pin 


200  THE   REBELLION. 

and  beau-ideal  of  Democratic  policy,  instead  of  pushing  at  once  to- 
ward Richmond,  which  he  could  have  done  by  railroad  by  way  of 
Aquia  Creek  and  Fredericksburg,  or  by  the  Manassas  and  Gor- 
donsville  road,  marched  his  army  back  to  Alexandria,  where  hun- 
dreds perished  or  received  the  cause  of  their  death,  in  the  open 
fields  and  woods  in  sight  of  their  tents,  during  the  cold,  drenching 
rains  to  which  they  were  exposed  for  many  days  prior  to  their  em- 
barkation for  Fortress  Monroe.  Democratic  policy,  still  ruling  the 
country  through  General  McClellan,  planned  the  ill-fated  campaign 
on  the  Peninsula  ;  and  although  he  had  insisted,  while  himself  near 
the  capital,  that  the  whole  army  of  the  Potomac  was  necessary  for 
its  defense,  yet  on  leaving,  under  positive  orders  that  this  city 
should  be  amply  defended,  he  seems  to  have  considered  fifteen 
thousand  raw  and  undisciplined  troops,  the  refuse  of  the  army,  suf- 
ficient for  its  protection,  —  all  of  the  army  in  and  around  Washing- 
ton except  this  meagre  force,  having  been  ordered  by  him  to  pro- 
ceed at  once  to  the  Peninsula.  Democratic  policy  compelled  the 
army  of  the  Potomac  to  sit  down  before  Yorktown  till  a  small 
army  had  grown  to  be  a  large  one,  and  then  permitted  it  to  evac- 
uate at  its  leisure.  General  Hooker,  with  his  advance  force, 
followed  :  but  Democratic  policy,  refusing  to  allow  him  to  be  rein- 
forced, held  thirty  thousand  men  within  sound  of  the  battle,  by 
which  our  forces  were  repulsed  and  the  escape  of  the  enemy 
secured.  When  our  army  at  length  reached  the  Chickahominy, 
Democratic  policy  founded  the  kingdom  of  pickaxes  and  spades, 
and  sent  thousands  of  our  soldiers  to  their  graves  because  the  em- 
ployment of  able-bodied^  negroes  in  ditching  would  be  offensive  to 
Democratic  gentility,  and  might  endanger  "  the  Union  as  it  was." 
When  General  McClellan,  by  order  of  General  Halleck,  left  the 
James  River,  and  reached  Alexandria  in  time  to  save  General  Pope 
at  the  second  battle  of  Bull  Run,  Democratic  policy,  forgetting  the 
country,  allowed  him  to  be  sacrificed.  Democratic  policy,  sifting 
its  deadly  poison  into  the  mind  of  the  President,  again  placed 
General  McClellan  in  command  of  the  army  of  the  Potomac,  and 
reinstated,  at  his  request,  the  generals  whose  failures  had  caused 
Pope's  defeat ;  and  the  "  strategy  "  which  followed  left  the  way 
open  for  the  withdrawal  of  General  Lee,  and  delayed  the  march 
of  our  forces  till  Harper's  Ferry  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the 
enemy.  Democratic  policy,  at  the  battle  of  Antietam,  kept  at  least 
forty  thousand  of  our  men  in  reserve,  and  thus  converted  a  magnifi- 
cent victory,  most  temptingly  brought  within  our  grasp,  into  at  best 
a  drawn  battle.      Democratic  policy,  which  cost  us  more  than  fifty 


THE   REBELLION.  201 

thousand  soldiers  on  the  Peninsula,  systematically  misled  the  public 
by  compelling  the  newspaper  correspondents  within  our  lines  to  sup- 
press facts  and  utter  falsehoods,  in  order  to  glorify  General  McClel- 
lan,  shield  him  from  popular  disapprobation,  and  perpetuate  his  com- 
mand. Democratic  policy  at  this  moment  clamors  for  his  restora- 
tion, and  every  man  who  blames  the  Republicans  for  bringing  on 
this  war,  and  who  declares,  as  General  McClellan  did  at  its  begin- 
ning, that  the  South  is  right ;  every  man  who  believes  in  wearing 
out  the  patience  of  the  country  by  military  failures,  so  that  the 
rebels  may  be  restored  to  power  through  some  infernal  compromise  ; 
every  man  who  despises  the  policy  which  would  win  victories,  or 
follow  them  up  when  won  ;  every  man  who  was  as  much  of  a  traitor 
as  he  had  the  courage  to  be  in  the  beginning  of  this  struggle,  and 
has  all  the  time  wished  the  rebels  a  hearty  God-speed  :  every  man 
who  has  done  his  best  to  discourage  enlistments,  embarrass  the  ac- 
tion of  the  government,  and  render  the  war  odious  to  the  people  ; 
every  man  who  raises  the  cry  of  peace,  and  talks  about  new  guar- 
antees to  pacify  the  felons  who  have  sought  the  nation's  life  ;  every 
man  who  loves  negro  slavery  better  than  he  loves  his  country,  and 
would  sooner  see  the  Republic  in  ruins  than  the  slaves  set  free,  is  the 
zealous  advocate  and  unflinching  champion  of  General  McClellan. 
Mr.  Chairman,  Democratic  policy  proves  itself  the  ally  of  trea- 
son by  hugging  the  cause  which  produces  it.  It  clings  to  slavery 
as  a  dying  man  clings  to  life.  It  condemns  its  prohibition  in  our 
Territories,  and  its  abolition  in  this  District.  In  the  midst  of  a 
terrific  struggle  of  the  nation  for  self-preservation,  requiring  the 
use  of  all  the  weapons  known  to  the  laws  of  war,  it  demands  the 
repeal  of  our  confiscation  laws,  and  denounces  the  President's  proc- 
lamation giving  freedom  to  the  slaves  of  rebels.  With  equal  zeal 
it  opposes  the  gradual  "  abolishment  of  slavery,"  with  the  consent 
of  loyal  masters,  and  compensation  allowed  them.  Democratic 
policy  clamors  for  peace  with  rebels  in  arms,  on  the  basis  of  the 
Crittenden  Compromise,  rejected  by  them  two  years  ago,  and 
which,  if  accepted,  would  completely  surrender  the  liberties  of  the 
people  to  the  slaveholding  vandals  of  the  South.  Democratic  pol- 
icy has  played  into  the  hands  of  rebels  by  refusing  the  help  of 
negroes  in  our  armies,  as  laborers,  teamsters,  cooks,  nurses,  scouts, 
and  soldiers,  thus  necessarily  weakening  our  military  power,  and 
sacrificing  the  lives  of  our  men.  Democratic  policy  has  sought 
the  office  of  slave-hound  for  rebels  ever  since  the  beginning  of  the 
war,  and  is  still,  occasionally,  exercising  its  functions  in  defiance  of 
positive  prohibitions.  Democratic  policy,  taking  the  form  of  "  Order 


202  THE  EEBELLION. 

No.  3,"  under  which,  for  more  than  a  year,  loyal  colored  men 
were  driven  from  our  camps,  and  their  proffered  aid  and  informa- 
tion rejected,  earned  the  gratitude  of  every  rebel  throughout  the 
Union,  and  the  curses  of  every  loyal  man.  Democratic  policy 
despises  an  abolitionist  far  more  heartily  than  a  traitor ;  the  term 
"abolitionist,"  according  to  a  leading  Democratic  organ,  signifying 
"  any  man  who  does  not  love  slavery  for  its  own  sake,  as  a  divine 
institution  ;  who  does  not  worship  it  as  the  corner-stone  of  civil 
liberty  ;  who  does  not  adore  it  as  the  only  possible  social  condition 
on  which  a  permanent  Republican  government  can  be  erected  ;  and 
who  does  not,  in  his  inmost  soul,  desire  to  see  it  extended  and  per- 
petuated over  the  whole  earth,  as  a  means  of  human  reformation, 
second  in  dignity,  importance,  and  sacredness,  to  the  religion  of 
Christ."  Democratic  policy,  by  thus  perpetually  deferring  to  slav- 
ery as  a  sacred  thing,  and  to  slaveholders  as  a  superior  order  of 
men,  has  smothered  that  feeling  of  resentment  in  our  armies 
which  else  would  have  been  evoked,  and  the  lack  of  which,  accord- 
ing to  our  commanders,  is  one  of  the  serious  obstacles  to  our  suc- 
cess. Democratic  policy,  in  the  year  1861,  gave  us  as  commanders 
of  our  three  great  military  departments,  McClellan,  Halleck,  and 
Buell,  whose  military  administrations  have  so  terribly  cursed  the 
country ;  while  it  imposed  upon  our  volunteer  forces  in  the  field 
such  officers  as  Fitz-John  Porter,  General  Nelson,  General  Stone, 
and  very  many  more  whose  sympathies  with  the  rebels  were  well 
known  throughout  the  country. 

Mr.  Wadsworth  :  I  desire  to  make  an  inquiry  of  the  gentle- 
man. I  thought  I  understood  him  to  say  that  General  Nelson's 
sympathies  with  the  rebels  was  well  known.  I  wish  to  know  if  he 
alludes  to  General  William  Nelson,  deceased. 

Mr.  Julian  :  I  allude  to  that  gentleman. 

Mr.  Wadsworth  :  I  was  born  and  reared  with  him,  served 
with  him  in  intimate  relations  against  the  rebels,  and  knew  him 
from  his  youth  up  to  the  time  of  his  death  ;  and  I  say  that  there 
was  not  a  more  determined  opponent  of  the  rebels  and  of  secession 
in  America.  The  language  of  the  gentleman  is  untrue.  The  stain 
attempted  to  be  cast  upon  the  memory  of  General  Nelson  is  unde- 
served and  unfounded.  Such  language  as  that  is  outrageous.  I 
have  heard  the  speech,  entirely  out  of  order  upon  this  bill,  with 
patience,  but  I  cannot  allow  the  memory  of  William  Nelson  to  be 
slandered  in  this  way. 

Mr.  Julian  :  In  reply  to  the  remarks  of  the  gentleman  from 
Kentucky  (Mr.  Wadsworth),  I  have  only  to  say  that  what  I  said 


THE   EEBELLION.  203 

is  true.  I  did  not  say  that  General  Nelson  was  a  rebel.  I  said  he 
was  well  understood  to  be  in  sympathy  with  the  rebels,  and  this 
understanding,  so  far  as  I  have  any  means  of  knowledge,  is  univer- 
sal among  the  soldiers  of  Indiana  and  Ohio  who  have  served  under 
him  in  the  field  in  Kentucky  and  elsewhere.  While  I  do  not  say 
that  he  was  a  rebel,  I  say  that,  like  some  other  distinguished  gen- 
tlemen from  Kentucky,  he  was  a  rebel  sympathizer,  loving  slavery 
more  than  he  loved  his  country.  That  I  desire  to  say  in  the  most 
emphatic  words  I  know  how  to  employ. 

The  gentleman  from  Kentucky  did  not  charge  me  with  an  inten- 
tional misrepresentation,  as  I  understood  him.  If  he  makes  that 
charge  I  shall  deal  with  it.  I  understand  we  simply  differ  as  to  a 
matter  of  fact. 

Mr.  Wadsworth  :  I  did  not  intend  to  charge  the  gentleman 
with  any  intentional  misrepresentation  touching  the  sentiments  of 
General  Nelson,  unless  he  makes  himself  responsible  for  it.  I  did 
not  know  but  that  he  was  making  a  statement,  in  which  he  con- 
fided, derived  from  others.  My  purpose  was  to  denounce  the 
statement  which  the  gentleman  brings  in  here.  I  do  not  care  who 
makes  the  statement,  he  is  a  slanderer  of  the  gallant  dead. 

Mr.  Julian  :  I  decline  to  yield  to  the  gentleman  further.  The 
gentleman  denounces  my  assertion  — 

Mr.  Wadsworth  :  I  denounce  it  as  a  slander. 

Mr.  Julian  :  And  I  denounce  the  gentleman's  denunciation, 
and  his  defense  of  a  rebel  sympathizer. 

Mr.  Speaker,  Democratic  policy,  speaking  through  officers  high 
in  command  in  the  army  of  the  Potomac,  now  more  than  a  year 
ago,  threatened  to  march  upon  the  capital  and  disperse  Congress 
as  Cromwell  did  the  Parliament,  because  a  joint  committee  of  both 
Houses  of  Congress  was  inquiring  into  the  conduct  of  the  war. 
Democratic  policy,  when  General  Fremont  proclaimed  freedom  to 
the  slaves  of  rebels  in  Missouri,  inundated  the  Executive  Mansion 
with  falsehoods  which  had  their  coining  in  pro-slavery  malice  and 
disappointed  ambition  ;  and  a  Republican  President,  yielding  to  a 
torrent  which  he  thought  resistless,  removed  him  from  his  com- 
mand ;  and  although  the  policy  of  this  proclamation  has  since  been 
accepted  by  the  government,  and  the  charges  on  which  he  was 
hounded  down  are  known  to  be  false,  yet  Democratic  policy  still 
deprives  the  country  of  his  service,  because  he  is  a  Republican, 
and  an  unbeliever  in  the  supreme  divinity  of  slavery.  Democratic 
policy  holds  in  its  hands  all  the  great  machinery  of  this  war,  and 
directs  it  according  to  its  own  will.     Our  present  Commander-in- 


204  THE   REBELLION. 

chief  is  a  Democrat,  whose  future  management  of  the  war,  if  we 
are  to  judge  from  his  past  career,  promises  nothing  for  the  country. 
Of  the  major  and  brigadier-generals  in  our  armies  Democratic  pol- 
icy has  favored  this  Republican  administration,  if  I  am  not  mis- 
taken, with  over  four-fifths,  —  Certainly  an  overwhelming  majority  ; 
while  those  great  hives  of  military  patronage,  the  Adjutant-gen- 
eral's Department,  the  Quartermaster's  Department,  the  Commis- 
sary Department,  the  Ordnance  Department,  and  the  Pay  Depart- 
ment, are  all  under  Democratic  control,  and  have  been  during 
the  war.  Several  of  the  heads  of  these  departments  held  their 
positions  under  James  Buchanan  ;  while  Democratic  policy  like- 
wise controls  the  chief  bureaus  in  the  Navy  Department.  Demo- 
cratic policy  has  not  only  studiously  thrown  into  the  background 
Republican  generals,  whose  hearts  are  in  the  war,  and  put  in  the 
lead  political  generals  of  its  own  type,  but  has  pursued  the  same 
policy  toward  Democratic  generals  who  have  evinced  a  change  of 
views  on  the  question  of  slavery.  Mitchell  and  Hunter  are  cases 
in  point,  while  Curtis  is  almost  the  only  Republican  general  who 
has  been  allowed  to  hold  an  independent  command  in  a  war  in 
which,  according  to  the  best  attainable  data,  more  than  three 
fourths  of  the  soldiers  of  the  Union  are  Republicans.  To  an 
alarming  extent  Democratic  policy  has  ruled  in  the  Post  Office, 
War,  Treasury,  and  Interior  Departments,  in  which,  after  very 
many  long  delayed  but  greatly  needed  removals,  effected  chiefly 
through  Congressional  intervention,  there  are  still  hundreds  of 
Democratic  clerks,  of  whom  many  are  known  to  be  rebels  in  heart, 
and  some  of  them  the  appointees  and  pets  of  Davis,  Floyd,  and 
Thompson.  What  is  equally  remarkable  is  the  fact  that  the  higher 
and  more  lucrative  grades  of  these  positions  are  nearly  all  given  to 
Democrats  ;  while  Democratic  policy,  adhering  to  its  ancient  cus- 
tom, under  this  Republican  administration,  bestows  upon  the  Dis- 
trict of  Columbia,  and  such  States  as  Maryland  and  Virginia,  a 
share  of  these  places  in  monstrous  disproportion  to  that  of  the  free 
States  of  the  North  and  West.  I  cannot  go  further  into  details  ; 
but  the  fruits  of  this  Democratic  policy  are  seen  in  great  military 
disasters ;  in  the  wasted  energies  and  fading  hopes  of  the  people . 
in  reactionary  movements  in  the  free  States  ;  in  threatened  inter- 
vention from  abroad,  and  in  impending  national  ruin  ;  and  without 
a  speedy  change  in  our  policy,  no  power  but  that  of  God,  through 
miraculous  intervention,  can  save  our  country. 

Mr.  Chairman,  the  time  has  come  when  every  true  man  in  the 
Union  should  demand,  in  the   name   of  the  country,  that  Dem- 


THE   REBELLION.  205 

ocrati'c  policy  shall  rule  it  no  longer.  When  the  nation  is  gasping 
for  breath  because  the  honored  leaders  of  Republicanism  have  been 
infidel  to  its  principles,  plainness  of  speech  is  a  duty,  and  silence  a 
crime.  As  a  freeman,  and  the  Representative  of  freemen,  it  is  at 
once  my  right  and  my  duty  to  utter  what  I  believe  to  be  vital 
truth.  I  deeply  regret  the  necessity  which  compels  me  to  criti- 
cise the  policy  of  the  administration.  I  honor  the  President  as 
the  chief  magistrate  of  the  Republic,  and  love  him  as  a  man.  I 
have  received  at  his  hands  nothing  but  personal  kindness  and  po- 
litical respect.  I  stand  ready  to  make  any  earthly  sacrifice  to  sus- 
tain him  in  this  direful  conflict  with  the  rebel  power  of  the  coun- 
try, North  and  South.  "  Faithful  are  the  reproofs  of  a  friend," 
and  it  is  as  his  friend,  seeking  to  rescue  the  land  from  political 
perdition,  and  not  as  a  disguised  rebel,  seeking  to  undermine  his 
administration,  that  I  speak.  I  tell  him  that  his  policy  of  concil- 
iating Democrats  has  been  as  ruinous  to  our  cause  as  the  kindred 
policy  of  conciliating  rebels.  Instead  of  winning  them  to  our  side, 
blotting  out  the  lines  of  party,  and  inaugurating  an  "  era  of  good 
feeling,"  it  has  breathed  fresh  life  and  vigor  into  the  Democratic 
organization,  which  now  everywhere  confronts  us  as  a  powerful 
and  consolidated  opposition,  while  our  own  party  is  disbanded  and 
powerless.  Sir,  had  the  policy  of  the  government  been  boldly  Re- 
publican, making  good  to  the  people  their  victory  over  the  cohorts 
of  slavery  in  I860,  every  Northern  State  would  to-day  have  been 
wheeled  into  line  on  the  side  of  the  administration,  and  the  Dem- 
ocratic party  would  have  been  lingering  on  its  death-bed.  The 
war  itself,  I  firmly  believe,  would  have  been  ended,  and  with  far 
less  sacrifice  of  treasure  and  blood  than  we  have  already  incurred. 
I  speak  respectfully,  but  earnestly,  when  I  say  the  President  must 
stand  b}r  his  friends,  if  he  expects  his  friends  to  stand  by  him.  He 
must  point  the  door  to  every  pampered  pro-slavery  rat  in  any  of 
his  public  cribs,  and  bestow  the  offices  and  honors  at  his  disposal 
upon  those  who  believe  in  the  Republican  Idea.  He  should  insti- 
tute, as  speedily  as  possible,  a  general  casting  out  of  devils  from 
the  various  departments  of  the  government,  and  fill  their  places 
with  men  who  believe  in  God,  and  who  have  not  outlived  their  con- 
sciences -in  serving  as  the  shameless  scullions  of  the  Slave  Power. 
By  all  means,  and  at  the  earliest  moment,  should  he  insist  upon  a 
lustration  of  the  Military  Department,  to  purify  it  from  the  deadly 
contamination  of  treason.  This  is  a  slaveholders'  rebellion.  The 
rebellion,  in  fact,  is  "  slavery  in  arms,"  and  therefore  no  man  who 
believes  in  slavery  is  fit  for  any  high  command.     The  war  is  not  a 


206  THE  REBELLION. 

war  of  sections,  but  of  ideas ;  and  we  need  and  must  have  military 
leaders  who  will  conduct  it  in  the  light  of  this  truth.  To  the  want 
of  such  leaders  must  be  attributed  the  delays  and  disasters  of  the 
struggle  thus  far.     General  Sigel  says:  — 

"  It  is  an  enormous  crime  to  expose  our  devoted  soldiers  to  the  fury  of  a 
united,  determined,  and  vigorous  enemy,  on  account  of  any  hesitancy  to  use 
the  right  means  at  the  right  time,  or  by  placing  men  in  high  and  responsible 
positions  who,  on  account  of  their  former  associations  and  pledges,  can  never 
be  trusted  as  sincere  friends  of  the  Republic,  nor  expected  to  strike  a  fatal 
blow  at  treason  and  rebellion." 

Sir,  we  must  have  commanders  who  will  fight,  not  simply  as 
the  stipendiaries  of  the  government,  but  as  men  whose  whole 
hearts  are  in  the  work,  and  who  believe,  religiously,  in  the  Rights 
of  Man. 

"  It  is  the  heart,  and  not  the  brain, 
That  to  the  highest  doth  attain." 

I  believe  you  may  search  the  history  of  the  world  in  vain  for 
such  armies  as  we  now  have  in  the  field.  Their  heroism  upon 
every  battle- field,  often  under  incompetent  commanders,  and  al- 
ways under  the  most  appalling  disadvantages,  must  be  the  theme 
of  everlasting  praise.  They  have  seemed  to  understand  this 
quarrel  from  the  beginning.  They  have  fought  as  only  men  could 
fight  who  counted  their  lives  as  nothing  in  comparison  with  the  life 
of  the  Republic,  and  the  imperiled  cause  of  liberty  on  earth.  The 
battle  of  Fredericksburg,  where  thousands  marched  into  the  jaws 
of  certain  death  without  the  wavering  of  a  hair,  affords  but  a 
single  example  of  the  spirit  which  has  so  ungrudgingly  offered  up 
so  many  heroic  lives  during  the  war.  Sir,  I  honor  our  patriot 
soldiers  as  I  honor  no  men,  titled  or  untitled,  who  walk  the  earth. 
Their  example,  looming  above  the  general  profligacy  and  faithless- 
ness of  mere  politicians,  has  already  made  humanity  sublime,  and 
anchored  the  final  triumph  of  our  cause  to  the  very  throne  of  the 
Eternal.  In  their  name  do  I  speak  when  I  plead  that  they  shall 
be  allowed  to  fight  our  battles  under  competent  and  worthy  lead- 
ers, whose  souls  are  on  fire  with  a  quenchless  zeal  for  our  cause. 
In  our  Avar  with  Mexico,  as  I  am  advised,  no  man  was  allowed  to 
hold  the  office  of  major-general  of  volunteers  or  brigadier-general, 
who  was  not  a  member  of  the  Democratic  party.  I  believe  this 
policy  was  extensively  carried  out  also  as  to  the  subordinate  places 
in  our  army,  at  least  nine-tenths  of  which  were  conferred  upon 
the  party  in  power.  General  Scott  and  General  Taylor  were 
Whigs,  but  they  held  their  positions  before  the  war,  and  during  its 


THE   REBELLION.  207 

progress  had  to  encounter  a  fierce  and  formidable  opposition  from 
the  administration  and   its  friends.     I  am  not   finding;   fault  with 
this  policy,  which  I  refer  to  as  simply  showing  that  the  govern- 
ment, at  that   time,  dispensed  its  favors   among  its   friends,  and 
intrusted  the  command  of  our  armies  to  men  who  believed  in  the 
ivar.     This  the  government  should  do  to-day.     This  is  a  Avar  of 
freedom  and  free   labor  against  a   mighty  aristocracy  based  upon 
the  ownership  of  men.     Our  aim  is  the  overthrow  of  that  power, 
and  the  reorganization  of  Southern  society  on  a  republican  basis  ; 
and  it  should  require  no  argument  to  prove  that  men  who  believe 
in  this  aristocracy  are  not  the  most  fit  commanders  in  such  a  con- 
test.    On  this  subject  history  is  not  wanting  in  lessons  to  guide  us. 
As  early  as  the    year  1888   the   cities   of  Germany,  which  had 
formed  four  leagues  in  self-defense   against  the  aristocracy  that 
lived  only  by  its  plunder  of  commerce,  were  engaged  in  deadly 
conflict  for  their  rights.     They  made   two   mistakes,  which  paved 
the  way  for  their  ruin.     They  lost  the  sympathy  of  the  peasantry, 
because  they  fought  only  for  the  privileges  of  the  cities  ;  and  they 
appointed  nobles   to  command  their  armies  who  cared  more  for 
their    property  in    the    cities   than  for  the  rights   of  the   people. 
These  nobles  counseled  "  moderation,"  and  one  of  them  proved  a 
traitor  on  the  field  of  battle.     Afterwards,  city  after  city  fell  into 
the  hands  of  the  aristocracy,  and  the  people  became  the  prey  of  a 
swarm  of  petty  monarchs,  who  annihilated  the  external  power  of 
the   country,   which  groans  under  their    oppression   to   this  day. 
The  same  principle  was  illustrated  in  our  Revolutionary  War  bv 
the  State  of  South  Carolina,  which  swarmed  with  Royalists  and 
Tories,  who,  like  the  rebels  now  in  arms  against  us,  loved  slavery 
more  than  they  loved  their  country.    It  is  not  possible  to  p^it  down 
one  privileged  class  through  the  leadership  of  another,  unless  their 
interests  are  antagonistical. 

Mr.  Chairman,  the  fatal  consequence  of  losing  sight  of  the  prin- 
ciple I  am  now  urging  has  been  seen  in  the  recall  of  General  Fre- 
mont from  his  command  of  the  Western  Department.  In  the  year 
1856,  his  name  had  been  conspicuously  identified  with  the  great 
political  conflict  which  finally  culminated  in  a  conflict  of  arms.  He 
was  known  to  the  country  less  as  a  politician  than  as  a  patriot,  and 
a  man  of  genius  and  dauntless  courage  ;  and  there  was  a  romance 
about  his  life  and  name  which  kindled  the  popular  enthusiasm  in 
his  behalf  to  a  very  remarkable  degree.  He  entered  upon  his  com- 
mand at  the  end  of  July  with  less  than  twenty-five  thousand  effec- 
tive men,  poorly  armed  and  equipped ;  and  of  these,  ten  thousand 


208  THE   REBELLION. 

were  three-months'  men,  whose  time  expired  in  fen  days  from  his 
arrival.  At  the  end  of  October  he  held  sixty  thousand  square  miles 
of  the  enemy's  country,  and  had  succeeded  in  organizing  and  equip- 
ping an  army  which  was  everywhere  successful  along  the  whole  ex- 
tent of  his  lines.  He  had  restored  quiet  and  comparative  peace  to 
the  State  of  Missouri,  while  the  enemy  was  in  full  retreat  before  him. 
Believing  the  revolutionary  measures  of  the  rebels  could  only  be 
put  down  by  revolutionary  energy,  and  that  all  moderation  in  deal- 
ing with  them  was  the  expedient  of  weak  men  or  of  traitors,  he  im- 
pressed his  strong  will  and  earnest  purpose  upon  every  feature  of 
his  administration.  He  saw  then,  what  the  President  has  finally 
discovered  and  told  us  in  his  late  message,  that  "  the  dogmas  of 
the  quiet  past  are  inadequate  to  the  stormy  present ;  "  that  "as  our 
case  is  new,  so  we  must  think  anew  and  act  anew;"  and  that  "we 
must  disenthrall  ourselves,  and  then  we  shall  save  our  country." 
I  believe  no  commander  in  the  public  service  has  thus  far  shown 
more  military  genius,  or  been  more  successful,  considering  the  cir- 
cumstances of  his  command  ;  and  it  should  be  remembered  to  his 
credit  that  the  victories  of  our  arms  in  the  West,  early  in  last 
year,  were  achieved  upon  the  exact  lines  of  march  which  he 
planned  and  published  in  September  of  the  preceding  year. 
When  he  issued  his  proclamation  of  freedom  the  military  enthu- 
siasm of  the  people  was  unchilled.  With  gladness  and  thanks- 
giving they  received  it  as  a  new  sign  of  promise.  Even  such 
Democratic  papers  as  the  "  Boston  Post,"  "  Detroit  Free  Press," 
"  Chicago  Times,"  and  "  New  York  Herald,"  approved  of  it, 
while  it  stirred  and  united  the  people  of  the  loyal  States  during  the 
ten  days  of  life  allotted  it  by  the  government,  far  more  than  any 
other  evtnt  of  this  war.  The  President,  in  an  evil  hour,  annulled 
it ;  and  the  boiled-down  malice  and  meanness  which  it  provoked, 
and  which  were  poured  out  so  copiously  through  Adjutant-general 
Thomas,  finally  effected  the  intended  change  in  the  command  of 
this  department.  From  this  conduct  of  the  government  toward 
General  Fremont  dates  the  pro-slavery  reaction  which  we  now 
witness.  Beginning  then,  it  has  gained  force  and  volume  every 
hour  since.  It  balked  the  popular  enthusiasm,  which  else  would 
have  drawn  along  with  it  even  multitudes  of  conservative  men. 
It  caused  timid  and  halting  spirits  to  become  cowards  outright.  It 
gave  new  life  to  the  Slave  Power,  and  encouraged  fiercer  assaults 
upon  "  abolitionism."  The  Democratic  party,  which  the  Avar  had 
pretty  effectually  driven  into  retirement,  began  to  assume  its 
former  prerogatives,  and  manifest  its  sympathy  for  treason.     Sir,  I 


THE   REBELLION.  209 

can  never  think  of  the  woes  and  sorrows  with  which  this  war  has 
deluged  our  country  within  the  past  twelve  months,  without  de- 
ploring the  malign  influences  which  led  the  administration  to  strike 
down  a  Republican  Major-general  in  the  midst  of  a  glorious  career, 
and  in  defiance  of  the  sentiment  of  the  people,  while  Democratic 
generals  who  were  lauded  by  every  rebel  sympathizer  throughout 
the  country,  and  whose  incapacity  or  disloyalty  could  not  have 
been  unknown  to  the  government,  have  been  persistently  kept  at 
the  head  of  our  great  military  departments. 

Mr.  Chairman,  while  the  past  is  beyond  our  control,  its  lesson 
for  the  future  should  not  go  unheeded.  The  government  cannot 
"  escape  history ;  "  but  it  can  atone,  in  some  degree,  for  the  great 
wrong  it  has  done  the  country  and  General  Fremont,  by  restoring 
him  without  further  delay  to  active  service,  with  a  command 
befitting  his  rank  and  merits.  Every  consideration  of  justice  and 
patriotism  pleads  for  this.  He  has  been  the  victim  of  the  most 
cruel  injustice  and  the  most  unmerited  and  mortifying  humiliation. 
The  President  knows  this.  The  military  conduct  of  General  Fre- 
mont will  bear  the  most  rigid  scrutiny,  while  his  character  is  with- 
out a  stain.  The  policy  of  his  proclamation  has  been  vindicated 
by  time,  and  more  than  vindicated  by  the  administration  itself. 
Let  this  policy  be  committed  to  the  hands  of  its  undoubted  friends. 
The  restoration  of  General  Fremont  would  at  once  signalize  the 
earnestness  and  sense  of  justice  of  the  President,  and  win  back  to 
him  the  confidence  of  the  people.  It  would  be  a  conspicuous 
milestone  in  the  progress  of  the  government,  and  most  fitly  follow 
the  grand  message  which  proclaimed  freedom  to  millions  on  the 
first  day  of  the  new  year.  In  the  name  of  the  country  let  it  be 
done  ;  and  let  restitution  be  made  to  every  other  officer  in  our 
armies  who  has  been  the  victim  of  Democratic  policy.  The  gov- 
ernment, which  at  first  sought  to  spare  slavery,  now  seeks  to 
destroy  it.  At  last  it  has  a  policy  ;  and  I  hold  that  no  man  is  fit 
to  lead  our  armies,  or  to  hold  any  civil  position,  who  does  not  sus- 
tain that  policy.  Our  only  hope  lies  in  a  vigorous  prosecution  of 
the  war,  and  the  overthrow  of  Democratic  rule.  I  care  little  for 
mere  names.  For  such  generals  as  Rosecrans,  Butler,  Bayard, 
Rosseau,  Wallace,  Dumont,  and  Corcoran,  and  such  civilians  as 
Stanton,  Bancroft,  Owen,  and  Dickinson,  I  have  only  words  of 
praise.  They  are  heartily  for  their  country,  and  as  heartily  de- 
spise the  Democratic  leaders  who  gabble  about  compromise  with 
rebels.  The  recognized  leaders  of  the  Democratic  party,  judged 
by  their  avowed  policy,  are  disloyal  in  spirit  and  purpose.     They 

14 


210  THE  REBELLION. 

talk  about  the  "  Constitution  as  it  is,"  while  conniving  at  its  de- 
struction by  rebels,  and  offering  them  peace  on  the  basis  of  a  re- 
constructed government  and  another  Constitution.  They  clamor 
for  "  the  Union  as  it  was,"  and  mean  by  this  the  Union  more 
completely  than  ever  under  the  domination  of  slavery.  I  know 
what  I  hazard  by  this  freedom  of  speech.  I  know  that  should 
Democratic  policy  continue  to  sway  this  administration,  still  further 
disasters  may  overtake  our  arms.  I  know  that  the  people  may 
finally  reel  and  sicken  under  the  prolonged  spectacle  of  blood  and 
treasure  poured  out  in  vain;  and  that  the  restoration  of  the  Demo- 
cratic party  to  power  may  be  the  result,  followed  by  a  compromise 
inaugurating  a  "  reign  of  terror "  in  the  free  States  far  more 
relentless  than  that  which  prevailed  in  the  South  prior  to  the  war. 
Demagogues,  pointing  the  people  to  the  desolation  and  ruin  of  the 
country  caused  by  a  profitless  "  abolition  war,"  and  stimulated  by 
Southern  leaders  hungering  and  thirsting  for  revenge,  may  usher 
in  an  era  of  lawlessness  and  blood  scarcely  paralleled  in  history. 
The  leaders  of  Republicanism,  whose  counsels,  if  followed,  would 
have  saved  the  country,  may  be  confronted  by  dungeons,  gibbets, 
and  exile,  under  the  new  policy  which  the  Slave  Power,  maddened 
by  success,  would  dictate. 

Sir,  it  is  because  of  the  remorseless  despotism  which  Democratic 
policy  would  certainly  establish  that  I  denounce  it,  and  plead  with 
the  President  to  smite  it  with  all  the  power  of  the  government,  if 
he  would  save  either  his  country  or  himself.  The  Republic  of  our 
fathers  at  this  moment  swings  in  horrid  alternation  between  life 
and  death.  To  falter  or  hesitate  now  is  self-destruction.  Rose- 
water  statesmanship  will  not  meet  the  crisis.  Nothing  can  save 
us  but  the  earnestness  which  finds  its  reflex  in  the  rebels,  and  the 
courage  which  gathers  strength  from  despair.  A  wise  policy  of 
the  war  is  not  enough.  Proclamations  of  freedom  will,  of  them- 
selves, accomplish  little.  What  we  need  is  action,  instant,  deci- 
sive, defiant  action,  scourging  faithless  men  from  power,  sweeping 
away  obstacles,  and  kindling  in  the  popular  heart  the  fires  of  a 
new  courage  and  hope.  The  government  should  arm  the  colored 
men  of  the  free  States  as  well  as  the  slaves  of  the  South,  and 
thereby  give  effect  to  the  proclamation  of  freedom.  It  should 
at  once  organize  a  bureau  of  emancipation,  to  take  charge  of  the 
great  interests  devolved  upon  it  by  the  extinction  of  slavery. 
While  paying  a  fair  assessment  for  the  slaves  of  loyal  owners,  it 
should  digest  an  equitable  homestead  policy,  parceling  out  the 
plantations  of  rebels  in  small  farms  for  the  enjoyment  of  the  freed- 


THE   REBELLION.  211 

men,  who  have  earned  their  right  to  the  soil  by  generations  of 
oppression,  instead  of  selling  it  in  large  tracts  to  speculators,  and 
thus  laying  the  foundations  of  a  system  of  land  monopoly  in  the 
South  scarcely  less  to  be  deplored  than  slavery  itself.  It  should 
seize  all  property  belonging  to  traitors,  and  use  it  in  defraying  the 
expenses  of  the  war.  It  should,  as  far  as  possible,  send  all  disloyal 
persons  beyond  our  lines.  It  should  see  to  it  that  corrupt  army 
contractors  are  shot.  It  should  deal  with  rebels  as  having  no  rights 
under  the  Constitution,  or  by  the  laws  of  war,  but  the  right  to  die. 
It  should  make  war  its  special  occupation  and  study,  using  every 
weapon  in  its  terrible  armory  in  blasting  forever  the  organized 
diabolism  which  now  employs  all  the  enginery  of  hell  in  its  work 
of  national  murder,  and  threatens  to  make  our  country  the  grave 
of  liberty  on  earth.  Such  an  earnestness,  thus  born  of  the  unut- 
terable guilt  of  the  rebels  and  the  peril  of  great  and  priceless  inter- 
ests, and  sustained  by  a  firm  faith  in  the  justice  of  our  cause  and 
the  smiles  of  our  Maker,  would  speedily  restore  our  country  to  the 
glad  embrace  of  peace,  and  reassure  its  promise  of  free  govern- 
ment to  the  victims  of  despotic  power  throughout  the  world.  Our 
liberties  would  be  saved  from  present  destruction,  and  new  pulsa- 
tions of  life  would  be  sent  down  through  all  the  coming  genera- 
tions of  men. 


HOMESTEADS   FOR   SOLDIERS    ON    THE    LANDS 
OF    REBELS. 

HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES,  MARCH  18,  1864. 

[The  measure  here  advocated  passed  the  House  by  yeas  75,  nays  64,  but  failed  in 
the  Senate  through  conservative  scruples,  as  did  the  policy  of  striking  at  the  fee  of 
rebel  land  owners,  which  Mr.  Lincoln  finally  favored.  That  these  mistakes  are  sadly  to 
be  deplored  no  one  can  doubt,  who  will  ponder  the  arguments  of  this  speech  in  connec- 
tion with  the  actual  condition  of  affairs  in  the  South  since  the  close  of  the  war.  The 
dismemberment  of  the  great  rebel  estates,  and  their  distribution  among  the  poor,  was 
obviously  the  true  policy  of  Reconstruction.] 

Mr.  Speaker,  —  Daring  the  past  month  I  prepared  and  re- 
ported from  the  Committee  on  Pnblic  Lands  a  bill  to  provide  home- 
steads for  persons  in  the  military  and  naval  service  of  the  United 
States,  on  the  forfeited  and  confiscated  lands  of  rebels.  The  bill 
was  recommitted  and  printed  ;  and  my  purpose  was  to  discuss  its 
provisions  under  the  general  call  of  committees  for  reports,  which 
will  bring  the  subject  directly  before  the  House  for  its  action.  I 
find,  however,  in  the  crowded  state  of  our  business,  that  this  would 
delay  my  purpose  indefinitely  ;  and  I  have  therefore  concluded  to 
avail  myself  of  the  opportunity  now  offered  to  submit  what  I  have 
to  say. 

The  measure  referred  to  will  be  considered  a  novel  one,  but  it 
shoulj  not  therefore  be  regarded  with  surprise  or  disfavor.  Our 
country  is  in  a  novel  condition.  The  civil  war  in  which  we  are 
engaged  is  one  of  the  grandest  novelties  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
We  are  every  day  brought  face  to  face  with  new  questions,  and 
compelled  to  accept  the  new  duties  which  lie  in  our  path.  Who- 
soever comprehends  this  crisis  and  is  willing  to  assume  its  burdens, 
must  keep  step  to  the  march  of  events,  and  turn  his  back  upon  the 
past. 

The  bill  I  have  reported,  however,  is  less  a  novelty  in  its  prin- 
ciples than  in  their  application  to  new  and  unlooked  for  conditions." 
It  involves,  among  other  things,  the  policy  of  free  homesteads  to 
actual  settlers ;  and  since  this  policy  is  now  seriously  menaced,  1 
may  be  allowed  to  refer  brieflv  to  the  subject  by  way  of  preface  to 
what  I  shall  have  to  say  on  the  special  matter  before  us. 


HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OF  REBELS.     213 

Our  Homestead  Law  was  approved  May  the  20th,  1862.  Its 
enactment  was  a  long  delayed,  but  magnificent  triumph  of  freedom 
and  free  labor  over  the  Slave  Power.  While  that  power  ruled 
the  government,  its  success  was  impossible.  By  recognizing  the 
dignity  of  labor  and  the  equal  rights  of  the  million,  it  threatened 
the  very  life  of  the  oligarchy  which  had  so  long  stood  in  its  way. 
The  slaveholders  understood  this  perfectly  ;  and  hence  they  re- 
sisted it,  reinforced  by  their  Northern  allies,  with  all  the  zeal  and 
desperation  with  which  they  resisted  "  abolitionism  "itself.  Its  final 
success  is  among  the  blessed  compensations  of  the  bloody  conflict  in 
which  we  are  plunged.  This  policy  takes  for  granted  the  notorious 
fact  that  our  public  lands  have  practically  ceased  to  be  a  source  of 
revenue.  It  recognizes  the  evils  of  land  monopoly  on  the  public 
domain,  as  well  as  in  the  old  States,  and  looks  to  its  settlement  and 
improvement  as  the  true  aim  and  highest  good  of  the  Republic.  It 
disowns,  as  iniquitous,  the  principle  which  would  tax  our  landless 
poor  men  a  dollar  and  a  quarter  per  acre  for  the  privilege  of  culti- 
vating the  earth  ;  for  the  privilege  of  making  it  a  subject  of  taxa- 
tion, a  source  of  national  revenue,  and  a  home  for  themselves  and 
their  little  ones.  It  assumes,  to  use  the  words  of  General  Jack- 
son, that  "  the  wealth  and  strength  of  a  country  are  its  popula- 
tion," and  that  "  the  best  part  of  that  population  are  the  culti- 
vators of  the  soil."  This  bold  and  heroic  statesman  urged  this 
policy  thirty-two  years  ago ;  and  had  it  then  been  adopted,  coupled 
with  adequate  guards  against  the  greed  of  speculators,  millions  of 
landless  men  who  have  since  gone  down  to  their  graves  in  the 
weary  conflict  with  poverty  and  hardship,  would  have  been  cheered 
and  blest  with  independent  homes  on  the  public  domain.  Wealth 
incalculable,  quarried  from  the  mountains  and  wrung  from  the  for- 
ests and  prairies  of  the  West,  would  have  poured  into  the  federal 
coffers.  The  question  of  slavery  in  our  national  Territories  would 
have  found  a  peaceful  solution  in  the  steady  advance  and  sure  em- 
pire of  free  labor,  whilst  slavery  in  its  strongholds,  girdled  by  free 
institutions,  might  have  been  content  to  die  a  natural  death,  instead 
of  ending  its  godless  career  in  an  infernal  leap  at  the  nation's 
throat. 

The  Homestead  Act  did  not  go  into  effect  till  the  1st  of  Jan- 
uary, 1863.  Within  four  months  from  that  date,  notwithstanding 
the  troubled  state  of  the  country,  more  than  a  million  of  acres 
were  taken  up  under  its  provisions ;  and  at  the  close  of  the  year 
ending  September  30th,  this  amount  was  increased  to  nearly  a 
million  and  a  half.    Peace  will  soon  revisit  the  land  and  resurrect 


214    HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OF  REBELS. 

the  nation  to  a  new  life.  The  energy  and  activity  of  the  people, 
now  directed  to  the  business  of  war,  will  be  dedicated  afresh  to  in- 
dustrial pursuits.  Many  thousands  in  the  loyal  States  who  will 
have  caught  the  spirit  of  travel  and  adventure,  and  far  greater 
multitudes  in  the  Old  World  who  will  be  tempted  to  our  shores, 
will  lay  hold  of  the  homestead  law  as  their  glad  refuge  and  sure 
help.  It  will  be  the  day-star  of  hope  to  millions  beyond  the  sea, 
as  it  is  now  the  fond  child  of  the  millions  of  our  own  people  who 
march  under  the  old  flag  of  our  fathers.  Should  it  stand  for  ten 
years  to  come,  its  blessings  will  outstrip  the  most  sanguine  antici- 
pations of  its  friends.  Its  overthrow,  I  have  said,  is  threatened  ;  and 
this  is  done  by  indirection,  as  well  as  open  assault.  Since  the  date 
of  its  passage  Congress  has  granted  nearly  seven  millions  of  acres 
for  the  benefit  of  agricultural  colleges,  and  about  twenty  millions 
to  aid  in  the  construction  of  railroads.  There  are  now  pending 
before  Congress  bills  making  other  grants  for  railroads,  amounting 
to  nearly  seventy  millions  of  acres.  We  have  a  project  before  us 
which  grants  nearly  seven  millions  of  acres  for  the  education  of 
the  children  of  soldiers  ;  another  granting  two  hundred  thousand 
acres  in  the  State  of  Michigan  for  the  establishment  of  female  col- 
leges, which  of  course  would  be  extended  to  the  other  States  ;  and 
another  granting  ten  millions  of  acres  for  the  establishment  of  nor- 
mal  schools  for  young  ladies.  Every  day  witnesses  the  birth  of 
new  projects,  by  which  our  public  lands  may  be  frittered  away  and 
the  beneficent  policy  of  the  homestead  law  mutilated  and  de- 
stroyed. And,  simultaneously  with  the  development  of  this  back- 
ward movement,  and  as  if  to  aid  it,  speculators  are  hovering  over  the 
public  domain,  picking  and  culling  large  tracts  of  the  best  lands, 
and  thus  cheating  the  government  out  of  their  productive  wealth, 
and  the  poor  man  out  of  the  home  which  else  might  be  his  at  the 
end  of  the  war.  Whilst  the  homestead  policy  is  thus  invaded  by 
gradual  approaches  and  indirect  attack,  its  overthrow  is  boldly 
demanded  as  a  financial  necessity.  A  veteran  public  journalist, 
and  one  of  the  foremost  party  leaders  of  our  time,1  proposes  to  go 
back  from  the  Christian  dispensation  of  free  homes  and  actual  set- 
tlement to  the  Jewish  darkness  of  land  speculators  and  public  plun- 
der. He  wants  money  to  pay  our  immense  national  debt,  and 
seeks  to  obtain  it  by  levying  on  the  lands  which  the  nation  has 
already  dedicated  by  law  to  occupancy  and  cultivation  as  the  sure 
means  of  revenue.  What  we  want  and  the  government  needs,  is 
Immigration.     This  is  demonstrated  by  the  report  of  Hon.  Sam- 

i  Thurlow  Weed. 


HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OF  REBELS.     215 

uel  B.  Ruggles  to  the  International  Congress  which  met  at  Berlin 
in  last  September.  He  takes  the  eight  food-producing  States  of 
Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  Michigan,  Wisconsin,  Minnesota,  Iowa,  and 
Missouri,  and  shows  that  between  the  years  1850  and  I860  their 
population  increased  3,554,095,  of  whom  a  very  large  proportion 
were  emigrants  from  the  old  States  and  from  Europe.  He  shows 
that  this  influx  of  population  increased  the  quantity  of  improved 
land  in  these  States,  within  the  same  period,  25,146,054  acres  ; 
that  the  cereal  products  of  these  States  increased  248,210,028 
bushels ;  that  their  swine  increased  2,503,224 ;  their  cattle, 
2,831,098.  He  further  shows  that  within  the  same  period,  the 
assessed  value  of  real  and  personal  estate  of  these  States  was  aug- 
mented $2,810,000,000.  These,  to  a  great  extent,  are  the  direct 
results  of  immigration  ;  and  in  the  light  of  these  facts  the  interest 
and  duty  of  the  government  are  palpable.  By  all  honorable  and 
reasonable  means  it  should  tempt  Europe  to  send  her  people  to  onr 
shores.  From  1850  to  1860  the  immigration  averaged,  annually, 
270,762,  giving  a  total  of  2,707,620.  Within  the  next  ten  years, 
should  the  homestead  policy  continue,  the  number  of  immigrants 
will  probably  far  transcend  all  precedent,  while  increasing  multi- 
tudes from  our  older  States  will  join  in  the  grand  procession 
towards  the  West.  If  Thurlow  Weed  wishes  to  use  the  public 
domain  in  paying  our  national  debt,  here  is  the  process.  It  is  sim- 
ply to  give  heed  to  the  divine  injunction  to  "  multiply  and  replen- 
ish the  earth."  It  is  to  give  homes  to  the  millions  who  need  them, 
and  at  the  same  time  coin  their  labor  into  national  wealth  by  mar- 
rying it  to  the  virgin  soil  which  woos  the  cultivator.  It  is  to  compel 
the  earth  to  yield  up  her  fruits,  so  that  commerce  may  transmute 
them  into  silver  and  gold.  Thus  only  can  we  solve  the  problem  of 
our  finances,  so  far  as  the  public  lands  are  concerned.  The  project 
of  paying  a  debt  of  three  thousand  millions  of  dollars,  or  even  the 
interest  on  it,  by  t\\<£sale  of  these  lands,  is  sublimely  ridiculous  ; 
whilst  the  proposition  to  repeal  the  homestead  law  is  a  proposition 
to  encourage  speculation,  to  plunder  the  government,  to  betray  the 
just  rights  of  millions  by  violating  the  plighted  faith  of  the  nation, 
to  hinder  the  march  of  civilization,  and  to  weaken  the  force  of  our 
example  as  a  Republic,  asserting  equal  rights  and  equal  laws  as  the 
basis  of  its  policy. 

But  I  pass  from  this  topic.  I  have  adverted  to  it,  partly  because 
I  desired  to  sound  the  alarm  of  danger  in  the  ears  of  the  people, 
and  thus  avert  its  approach,  and  partly  because  the  considerations  I 
have  presented  bear  directly  upon  the  measure  now  before  the 
House. 


216     HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OF  REBELS. 

Mr.  Speaker,  this  rebellion  has  frequently,  and  very  justly,  been 
styled  a  slaveholders'  rebellion.  It  is  likewise  a  landholders'  rebel- 
lion, for  the  chief  owners  of  slaves  have  been  the  chief  owners  of 
land.  Probably  three  fourths,  if  not  five  sixths  of  the  lands  in  the 
rebel  States  at  the  beginning  of  the  war  belonged  to  the  slavehold- 
ers, who  constituted  onlyt  about  one  fiftieth  part  of  the  whole  popu- 
lation of  those  States  ;  whilst  of  the  entire  landed  estate  of  the  three 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  slaveholders  of  the  South,  at  least  two 
thirds  belonged  to  less  than  one  third  of  their  number.  I  make  my 
calculations  from  our  census  tables,  and  such  other  information  as  I 
find  within  my  reach.  The  bill  I  have  reported,  therefore,  contem- 
plates no  general  seizure  and  confiscation  of  the  property  of  the  peo- 
ple in  the  insurrectionary  districts.  It  looks  to  no  sweeping  meas- 
ures against  the  rights  of  the  masses,  but  simply  to  the  breaking  up 
and  distribution  of  vast  monopolies,  which  have  made  the  few  the 
virtual  owners  of  the  multitude,  whether  white  or  black.  It  is  a  bill 
to  restore  to  the  people  their  inalienable  rights,  by  chastising  the 
traitors  who  have  conspired  against  the  government.  It  proposes  to 
vest  in  the  United  States  the  lands  which  may  be  forfeited  by  con- 
fiscation in  punishment  of  treason,  or  of  other  crimes,  under  munic- 
ipal laws  ;  by  confiscation  as  a  right  of  war,  by  military  seizure,  or 
by  process  in  rem  ;  and  by  sales  for  non-payment  of  taxes.  The 
quantity  of  real  estate  which  will  thus  pass  from  the  hands  of  rebels 
cannot  now  be  definitely  determined,  but  in  seeking  to  estimate  it 
we  should  bear  in  mind  one  important  consideration.  The  war  which 
the  rebels  are  waging  against  us  is  no  longer  a  mere  insurrection. 
It  is  not  a  grand  National  riot,  but  a  civil,  territorial  war  between 
them  and  the  United  States.  Having  taken  their  stand  outside  of 
the  Constitution,  and  rested  their  cause  on  the  naked  ground  of 
lawless  might,  they  have,  of  necessity,  no  constitutional  rights.  For 
them  the  Constitution  has  ceased  to  exist.  They  are  belligerents, 
enemies  of  the  United  States.  They  still  «we  allegiance  to  the 
government,  and  are  still  traitors,  but  they  are  at  the  same  time 
public  enemies,  who  have  simply  the  rights  of  war,  and  are  to  be 
dealt  with  according  to  the  laws  of  war.  The  rights  of  war  and 
the  rights  of  peace  cannot  coexist  in  the  hands  of  rebels.  One 
party  to  a  contract  cannot  violate  it,  and  yet  hold  the  other  bound  ; 
and  hence  the  Constitution  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  our 
treatment  of  the  rebels,  unless  we  shall  see  fit  voluntarily  to  waive 
the  rights  of  war,  and  deal  with  them  as  citizens  merely.  I  am 
not  now  uttering  my  own  opinion,  but  the  solemn  judgment  of  the 
nation  itself,  speaking  authoritatively  through  the  highest  court  in 


HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OF  REBELS.     217 

the  Union.  According  to  the  decision  of  that  court,  a  civil  war 
between  the  United  States  and  the  rebels  has  been  carried  on  for 
more  than  two  years  and  a  half.  In  the  celebrated  prize  cases  de- 
cided last  spring,  and  reported  in  2  Black's  Reports,  p.  635,  Judge 
drier  says  :  "  The  parties  to  a  civil  war  are  in  the  same  predica- 
ment as  two  nations  who  engage  in  a  contest,  and  have  recourse  to 
arms ;  "  that  "  a  civil  war  exists  and  may  be  prosecuted,  on  the 
same  footing  as  if  those  opposing  the  government  were  foreign  in- 
vaders, whenever  the  regular  course  of  justice  is  interrupted  by 
revolt,  rebellion,  or  insurrection,  so  that  the  courts  cannot  be  kept 
open  ;  "  and  that  "  the  present  civil  war  between  the  United  States 
and  the  so-called  Confederate  States  has  such  a  character  and  mag- 
nitude as  to  give  the  United  States  the  same  rights  and  powers 
which  they  might  exercise  in  the  case  of  a  national  or  foreign 
war."  Such,  Mr.  Speaker,  is  the  law  as  to  the  relations  existing 
between  the  rebels  and  the  United  States.  I  am  not  arguing  the 
point,  because  all  argument  is  closed  by  this  decision.  The  rebels 
are  belligerents,  and  when  they  shall  be  effectually  vanquished, 
they  will  have  simply  the  rights  of  a  conquered  people  under  the 
law  of  nations,  that  is  to  sav,  such  rights  as  we  shall  choose  to 
grant  them  according  to  the  laws  of  war,  untrammeled  by  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

In  the  light  of  this  settled  principle,  Mr.  Speaker,  I  judge  of  the 
extent  of  rebel  territory  which  must  fall  under  our  control.  The 
war  will  increase  in  intensity  and  fierceness  to  the  end.  The  ex- 
asperation of  the  rebels  will  naturally  keep  pace  with  our  successes. 
Our  war  policy,  which  has  been  steadily  growing  more  and  more 
earnest  and  radical  for  the  past  two  years,  will  not  again  become  a 
"  war  on  peace  principles."  The  amnesty  proclamation  may  reach 
the  case  of  many,  but  should  it  reach  even  all  who  are  not  ex- 
pressly excepted  by  its  terms,  there  will  still  be  an  immense  terri- 
tory falling  under  our  power.  Sir,  whether  we  have  willed  it  or 
not,  this  is  now  a  war  of  subjugation,  and  the  law  of  nations  must 
govern  the  parties  and  the  settlement  of  the  dispute.  We  shall  not 
be  confined  to  the  penal  enactments  of  Congress  on  the  subject  of 
treason,  which  require  an  indictment,  a  regular  trial,  and  a  convic- 
tion. The  condemnation  of  rebel  property  need  not  depend  upon 
the  prosecution  of  its  owner  through  a  grand  jury,  who  may  be 
wholly  or  in  part  secessionists,  nor  upon  his  conviction  by  a  petit 
jury  of  like  character,  nor  upon  the  finding  of  a  bill  within  any 
statute  of  limitations.  Resting  our  case  on  the  law  of  nations  and 
the  laws  of  war,  we  are  not  compelled  to  seek  the  land  of  the  rebel 


218     HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OF  REBELS. 

through  a  trial  which  must  be  had  in  the  country  in  which  the 
offense  was  committed,  and  in  which  both  court  and  jury  may  be 
in  sympathy  with  the  accused.  The  several  tpenal  acts  of  Congress 
on  these  subjects,  and  the  ordinary  safeguards  of  law  applicable  to 
the  rights  of  citizens  in  a  time  of  peace,  are  not  in  our  way.  The 
war  powers  of  the  government,  as  asserted  and  defined  in  the  5th, 
6th,  7th,  and  8th  sections  of  the  Confiscation  Act  of  July  17, 
1862,  point  to  a  remedy  as  sweeping  as  it  is  just ;  namely,  the  mil- 
itary seizure,  condemnation,  and  sale  of  the  real  estate  of  traitors 
and  their  abettors.  A  considerable  quantity  of  land,  it  is  true,  may 
pass  from  the  rebels  by  judicial  proceedings  against  them,  for  trea- 
son and  other  crimes  under  municipal  statutes.  I  know,  too,  that 
millions  of  acres  must  be  forfeited  by  the  non-payment  of  taxes. 
But,  independent  of  these  sources  of  title,  and  by  virtue  of  military 
seizure  and  condemnation  alone,  a  very  large  proportion  of  the 
lands  within  the  insurrectionary  districts  must  vest  in  the  govern- 
ment of  the  United  States. 

If  it  be  said  that  the  government  has  no  right  to  confiscate  the 
fee  simple  of  rebel  estates,  I  meet  it  with  a  direct  denial.  In  what 
I  have  said,  I  have  taken  this  right  for  granted.  I  have  never 
doubted  it  for  a  moment,  and  I  shall  not  now  argue  the  question. 
The  honest  refusal  of  the  President,  in  last  June,  to  allow  Con- 
gress to  touch  the  fee  of  rebels  in  arms  against  the  nation,  was  the 
saddest  and  grandest  mistake  of  his  life.  That  the  right  to  do  so 
was  disputed  and  debated  in  the  last  Congress,  as  it  has  been  exten- 
sively in  this,  by  some  of  our  wisest  statesmen  and  greatest  law- 
yers, will  hereafter  be  set  down  among  the  political  curiosities  of 
this  century.  Our  fathers  were  not  fools,  but  wise  men,  who  armed 
the  nation  with  the  power  to  crush  its  foes,  as  well  as  to  protect 
its  friends.  "  The  Constitution  was  made  for  the  people,  not  the 
people  for  the  Constitution."  It  was  not  designed  as  a  shield  in 
the  hands  of  traitors,  but  as  a  sword  in  the  hands  of  the  govern- 
ment to  smite  them  to  the  earth.  It  recognizes  the  law  of  nations 
and  the  laws  of  war ;  nor  was  it  possible  for  our  country  to  escape 
them.  The  builders  of  our  national  ship  did  not  so  fashion  and 
rig  her  that  she  could  sail  only  in  calm  weather  and  over  smooth 
seas,  but  they  qualified  her  to  ride  out  the  fiercest  tempest  in 
safety,  and  to  defy  all  pirates.  That  the  nation,  in  this  struggle 
for  its  life  against  redhanded  traitors  and  assassins  has  no  power  to 
confiscate  their  lands,  is  a  proposition  which  gives  comfort  to  every 
rebel  sympathizer  in  the  country,  while  it  insults  both  loyalty  and 
common  sense.      The  people  know  better,  and  on   this  question 


HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OF  REBELS.     219 

their  voice  must  be  heeded.  They  do  not  believe,  but  they  knoiv, 
that  the  lands  of  rebels  are  subject  to  our  power  under  the  laws  of 
war,  as  well  as  their  personal  property,  their  negroes,  or  their  lives. 
The  government,  in  the  course  of  this  struggle,  has  learned  many 
lessons.  Others  are  yet  to  be  mastered.  Having  learned  how  to 
strike  at  slavery  as  the  wicked  cause  of  the  war,  and  to  arm  the 
negroes  in  the  national  defense,  it  must  now  lay  hold  of  the  lands 
of  rebels.  I  believe  our  triumph  over  them  is  not  so  near  at  hand 
as  we  generally  suppose.  The  most  terrific  fighting  of  the  war  is 
yet  to  come.  They  do  not  dream  of  surrender,  or  compromise,  on 
any  conceivable  terms.  They  will  resist  us  to  the  end,  with  a 
spirit  as  remorseless  as  death,  and  as  bitter  as  the  ashes  of  hell. 
They  must  be  overcome  and  crushed  by  the  powers  of  Avar,  and  we 
must  employ,  with  all  the  might  which  can  be  kindled  by  the 
crisis,  every  weapon  known  to  the  law  of  nations.  Congress  must 
repeal  the  joint  resolution  of  last  year,  which  protects  the  fee  of 
rebel  landholders.  The  President,  as  I  am  well  advised,  now 
stands  ready  to  join  us  in  such  action.  Should  we  fail  to  do  this, 
the  courts  must  so  interpret  the  joint  resolution  as  to  make  its  re- 
peal needless.  Should  both  Congress  and  the  courts  stand  in  the 
way  of  the  nation's  life,  then  "  the  red  lightning  of  the  people's 
wrath  "  must  consume  the  recreant  men  who  refuse  to  execute  the 
popular  will.  Our  country,  united  and  free,  must  be  saved,  at 
whatever  hazard  or  cost ;  and  nothing,  not  even  the  Constitution, 
must  be  allowed  to  hold  back  the  uplifted  arm  of  the  government 
in  blasting  the  power  of  the  rebels  forever. 

I  come  then,  Mr.  Speaker,  to  the  practical  question  involved  in 
this  bill.  This  conflict  is  to  be  ended  by  hard,  desperate,  and  per- 
haps protracted  fighting.  We  shall  certainly  win  ;  and  our  triumph 
will  inevitably  divest  the  title  to  a  vast  body  of  land  in  the  rebel 
States,  and  place  it  under  our  control.  I  think  it  entirely  safe  to 
conclude  that  it  will  constitute  more  than  half,  and  probably  three 
fourths,  of  all  the  cultivated  lands  in  the  rebellious  districts.  It 
will  certainly,  in  any  event,  cover  millions  of  acres.  It  will  include 
all  lands  against  which  proceedings  in  rem  shall  be  instituted, 
under  the  provisions  of  the  act  to  suppress  insurrections,  and  pun- 
ish treason  and  rebellion,  approved  July  17,  1862  ;  all  lands  which 
may  be  sold  under  the  provisions  of  the  act  for  the  collection  of 
direct  taxes  in  insurrectionary  districts,  approved  June  7,  1862  ; 
and  all  lands  which  may  be  sold  under  the  provisions  of  the  act  to 
provide  internal  revenue  to  support  the  government,  approved 
July  1st  of  the  same  year. 


220     HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OF  REBELS. 

What  shall  be  done  with  these  immense  estates,  brought  within 
our  power  by  the  acts  of  rebels  ?  One  of  two  policies,  radically 
antagonistic,  must  be  accepted.  They  must  be  allowed  to  fall  into 
the  hands  of  speculators,  and  become  the  basis  of  new  and  fright- 
ful monopolies,  or  they  must  be  placed  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
government,  in  trust  for  the  people.  The  alternative  is  now  pre- 
sented, and  presses  upon  us  for  a  speedy  decision.  Under  the  laws 
of  Congress  now  in  force,  unchecked  by  counter  legislation,  these 
lands  will  be  purchased  and  monopolized  by  men  who  care  far  more 
for  their  own  mercenary  gains  than  for  the  real  progress  and  glory 
of  our  country.  Instead  of  being  parceled  out  into  small  home- 
steads, to  be  tilled  by  their  own  independent  owners,  they  will  be 
bought  in  large  tracts,  and  thus  not  only  deprive  the  great  mass  of 
landless  laborers  of  the  opportunity  of  acquiring  homes,  but  place 
them  at  the  mercy  of  the  lords  of  the  soil.  The  old  order  of 
things  will  be  swept  away,  but  a  new  order,  scarcely  less  to  be  de- 
plored, will  succeed.  In  place  of  the  slaveholding  land  owner  of 
the  South,  lording  it  over  hundreds  of  slaves  and  thousands  of 
acres,  we  shall  have  the  grasping  monopolist  of  the  North,  whose 
dominion  over  the  freed  men  and  poor  whites  will  be  more  galling 
than  slavery  itself,  which  in  some  degree  tempers  its  despotism 
through  the  interest  of  the  tyrant  in  the  health  and  welfare  of  his 
victims.  The  maxim  of  the  slaveholder  that  "  capital  should  own 
labor,"  will  be  as  frightfully  exemplified  under  the  system  of  wages- 
slavery,  the  child  of  land  monopoly,  as  under  the  system  of  chattel- 
slavery  which  has  so  long  scourged  the  Southern  States.  What  we 
should  demand  is  a  policy  that  will  guarantee  homes  to  the  loyal 
millions  who. need  them,  and  thus  guard  their  most  precious  rights 
and  interests  against  the  remorseless  exactions  of  capital  and  the 
pitiless  rapacity  of  avarice.  The  helpless  condition  of  the  poor  of 
the  rebel  States,  when  capitalists  shall  have  monopolized  the  land, 
is  already  foreshadowed  in  the  recent  report  of  Mr.  Yeatman,  of 
the  Western  Sanitary  Commission.     He  sats  :  — 

"  The  poor  negroes  are  everywhere  greatly  oppressed  at  their  condition. 
They  all  testify  that  if  they  were  only  paid  their  little  wages  as  they  earn 
them,  so  that  they  could  purchase  clothing,  and  furnished  with  the  provisions 
promised,  they  could  stand  it ;  but  to  work  and  get  poorly  paid,  poorly  fed,  and 
not  doctored  when  sick,  is  more  than  they  can  endure.  Among  the  thousands 
whom  I  cjuestioned  none  showed  the  least  unwillingness  to  work.  If  they 
could  only  be  paid  fair  wages  they  would  be  contented  and  happy.  They  do 
not  realize  that  they  are  free  men.  They  say  that  they  are  told  they  are,  but 
then  they  are  taken  and  hired  out  to  men  who  treat  them,  so  far  as  providing 
for  them  is  concerned,  far  worse  than  their  '  secesh  '  masters  did.    Besides  this, 


HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OF  REBELS.     221 

they  feel  that  their  pay  or  hire  is  lower  now  than  it  was  when  the  '  secesh ' 
used  to  hire  them. 

"  The  parties  leasing  plantations,  and  employing  these  negroes,  do  it  from 
no  motives,  either  of  loyalty  or  humanity.  The  desire  of  gain  alone  prompts 
them,  and  they  care  little  whether  they  make  it  out  of  the  blood  of  those  they 
employ,  or  from  the  soil.  There  are,  of  course,  exceptions  ;  but  I  am  informed 
that  the  majority  of  the  lessees  were  only  adventurers,  camp  followers,  '  army 
sharks,'  as  they  are  termed,  who  have  turned  aside  from  what  they  consider 
their  legitimate  prey,  the  poor  soldier,  to  gather  the  riches  of  the  land  which 
his  prowess  has  laid  open  to  them.  I  feel  that  the  fathers  and  brothers  and 
friends  of  these  brave  men  should  have  an  opportunity  to  reap,  under  a  more 
equitable  system  for  the  laborer,  the  reward  of  the  months  of  toil  and  expos- 
ure it  has  cost  to  open  this  country  to  the  institutions  of  freedom  and  compen- 
sated labor.  If  these  plantations  were  required  to  be  subdivided  into  parcels 
or  tracts,  to  suit  the  views  and  means  of  our  Western  men,  say  in  farms  of  from 
one  to  two  hundred  acres,  thousands  would  soon  flock  to  the  South  to  lease 
them,  especially  when  it  was  known  that  one  acre  of  ground  there  cultivated 
in  cotton  would  yield,  in  dollars,  ten  times  as  much  as  at  home.  Besides,  this 
subdivision  would  attract  a  loyal  population,  who  would  protect  the  country 
against  any  guerrilla  bands  that  might  infest  it." 

Mr.  Speaker,  the  poor  whites  of  the  South  will  be  as  powerless 
to  take  care  of  themselves  as  the  freedmen,  unless  the  government 
shall  arm  them  against  their  masters.  "  Subdivision  "  of  the  land, 
as  Mr.  Yeatman  says,  would  also  secure  a  loyal  population,  since 
every  man  who  has  a  home  to  love  and  to  defend  will  naturallv 
love  his  country.  This  rebellion  will  present  the  strongest  tempta- 
tions to  land  monopoly  that  were  ever  offered  to  the  greed  of 
avarice  and  power.  The  rich  lands  of  the  South  have  been 
cursed  by  this  evil  from  the  beginning,  and  without  the  interposi- 
tion of  Congress  the  system  will  be  continued,  and  vitalized  anew 
by  falling  into  fresh  hands.  The  degraded  and  thriftless  condition 
of  the  people,  the  heritage  of  centuries  of  bondage,  will  pave  the 
way  for  land  monopoly  in  more  grievous  forms  than  have  yet  been 
recorded  in  ancient  or  modern  times.  Society  cannot  possibly  be 
organized  on  a  Republican  basis,  because  a  grinding  aristocracy, 
resting  upon  large  landed  estates,  will  convert  the  mass  of  the 
people  into  mere  drudges  and  dependents.  African  slavery  may 
not  exist  in  name,  but  the  few  will  practically  control  the  fortunes 
of  the  many,  irrespective  of  color  or  race.  In  such  communities 
public  improvements  will  necessarily  languish.  Wasteful  and 
slovenly  farming  will  stamp  upon  the  country  the  impress  of  dilap- 
idation, while  reducing  the  productiveness  of  the  soil  and  hinder- 
ingt  he  growth  of  manufactures  and  commerce.  In  the  midst  of 
large  landed  estates,  towns  and  villages  can  neither  be  multiplied 
nor  enjoy  a  healthy  growth.     The  want  of  diversity  of  pursuits 


222     HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OF  REBELS. 

and  competition  in  business  will  palsy  the  energies  of  the  people. 
The  education  of  the  masses  will  be  .impossible,  since  the  estab- 
lishment and  support  of  schools  within  convenient  reach  of  the 
people  cannot  be  secured.  The  proprietors  of  the  great  estates,  as 
has  been  well  remarked,  will  be  feudal  lords,  while  the  poor  will 
have  no  feudal  rights.  Under  the  tendency  of  a  false  system, 
society  will  steadily  gravitate  towards  the  example  of  South 
America  and  Mexico,  where  some  estates  are  larger  than  two  or 
three  of  the  smaller  States  of  our  Union.  The  country  will  find 
its  likeness  in  England,  in  which  the  smaller  landholders  are  daily 
being  swallowed  up  by  the  larger.  "  In  the  civilized  world,"  says 
Dr.  Channing,  "  there  are  few  sadder  spectacles  than  the  present 
contrast  in  Great  Britain  of  unbounded  wealth  and  luxury,  with 
the  starvation  of  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands,  crowded  into 
cellars  and  dens,  without  ventilation  or  light,  compared  with  which 
the  wigwam  of  the  Indian  is  a  palace.  Misery,  famine,  brutal 
degradation,  in  the  neighborhood  and  presence  of  stately  mansions, 
winch  ring  with  gayety,  and  dazzle  with  pomp  and  unbounded 
profusion,  shock  us  as  does  no  other  wretchedness." 

Sir,  the  sympathy  of  the  British  aristocracy  for  the  rebels  is 
altogether  natural.  Land  monopoly  is  slavery.  The  great  Eng- 
lish landlord  looks  upon  the  large  slaveholders  of  the  South  as 
"  brothers  beloved,"  while  the  "  sand-hillers  "  and  "  clay-eaters" 
of  Carolina  and  Georgia  are  perhaps  not  more  miserably  degraded 
by  unjust  laws  than  the  English  agricultural  laborer.  Mr.  Ban- 
croft, describing  the  condition  of  Italy  some  two  thousand  years 
ago,  says  :  — 

"  The  aristocracy  owned  the  soil  and  its  cultivators.  The  vast  capacity  for 
accumulation  which  the  laws  of  society  secure  to  capital  in  a  greater  degree 
than  to  personal  exertion,  displays  itself  nowhere  so  clearly  as  in  slaveholding 
States,  where  the  laboring  class  is  but  a  portion  of  the  capital  of  the  opulent. 
As  wealth  consists  chiefly  in  land  and  slaves,  the  rates  of  interest  are,  from 
universally  operative  causes,  always  comparatively  high ;  the  difficulty  of  ad- 
vancing with  borrowed  capital  proportionally  great.  The  small  landholder 
finds  himself  unable  to  compete  with  those  who  are  possessed  of  whole  cohorts 
of  bondmen  ;  his  slaves,  his  lands,  rapidly  pass,  in  consequence  of  his  debts, 
into  the  hands  of  the  more  opulent.  The  large  plantations  are  continually 
swallowing  up  the  smaller  ones ;  and  land  and  slaves  come  to  be  engrossed  by 
a  few." 

This  is  not  only  an  exact  description  of  slavery  as  we  have  seen 
it  in  the  Southern  States,  but  a  parallel  in  principle  to  the  system 
of  aristocracy  in  England,  founded  on  the  monopoly  of  the  soil. 
Travellers  through   that  country  speak  of  it  as  "thinly  settled." 


HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OF  REBELS.     223 

Outside  of  the  cities  and  towns  this  is  true.  Even  the  commons,  on 
which  the  poor  used  to  pasture  their  cattle  and  enjoy  their  games, 
are  now  inclosed  by  legalized  land  robbers.  Those  who  demand 
a  correction  of  these  evils,  in  the  name  of  justice  and  the  people, 
are  denounced  as  "  agrarians,"  just  as  the  enemies  of  slavery  in 
this  country  are  branded  as  "  abolitionists."  The  slaveholding 
land  monopolists  of  this  country  are  to-day  reaping  the  bitter 
fruits  of  their  unrighteous  domination.  A  retribution  to  the  aris- 
tocracy of  England,  not  less  terrible,  is  as  certain  to  come,  as  that 
pampered  injustice  finds  no  limits  to  its  demands. 

But  I  need  not  dwell  longer  upon  the  evils  of  land  monopoly. 
The  history  of  civilization  furnishes  an  unbroken  testimony  to 
these  evils,  and  thus  pleads  with  us,  in  the  organization  of  new  civil 
communities,  to  fortify  ourselves  against  them.  A  grand  opportu- 
nity now  presents  itself  for  recognizing  the  principles  of  radical 
democracy  in  the  establishment  of  new  and  regenerated  States. 
We  are  summoned  by  every  consideration  of  patriotism,  humanity, 
and  Republicanism  to  lay  the  foundations  of  empire  upon  the 
enduring  basis  of  justice  and  equal  rights.  No  revolutionary  or 
destructive  measures  are  required  on  our  part.  We  are  already  in 
the  midst  of  revolution  and  chaos.  Through  no  fault  of  our  own, 
the  foundations  of  social  and  political  order  in  the  rebel  States  are 
subverted,  and  the  elimination  of  a  great  disturbing  element  opens 
up  our  pathway  to  the  establishment  of  free  Christian  common- 
wealths on  the  ruins  of  the  past.  These  States  constitute  one  of 
the  fairest  portions  of  the  globe.  They  are  larger  in  area  than  all 
the  free  States  of  the  North.  They  have  a  sea  and  gulf  coast  of 
more  than  six  thousand  miles  in  extent,  and  are  drained  by  more 
than  fifty  navigable  rivers,  which  are  never  closed  to  commerce  by 
the  rigor  of  the  climate.  They  have  at  least  as  rich  a  soil  as  the 
States  of  the  North,  yielding  great  wealth-producing  staples  pecul- 
iar to  them,  and  two  or  three  crops  in  the  year.  They  have  a 
finer  climate,  and  their  agricultural,  manufacturing,  and  commer- 
cial advantages  are  decidedly  superior.  Their  geographical  posi- 
tion is  better,  as  respects  the  great  commercial  centres  of  the  world. 
The  institution  of  slavery,  which  has  so  long  cursed  these  regions 
by  excluding  emigration,  degrading  labor,  and  impoverishing  the 
soil,  will  very  soon  be  expelled.  The  cry  which  already  comes  up 
from  these  lands  is  for  free  laborers.  If  we  offer  them  free  home- 
steads, and  protect  their  rights,  they  will  come.  John  Bright,  in 
a  recent  speech  at  Birmingham,  estimates  that  within  the  past 
year  150,000  people  have  sailed  from  England  to  New  York.     Let 


224     HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OF  REBELS. 

it  be  settled  that  slavery  is  dead,  and  that  the  estates  of  traitors  in 
the  South  can  be  had  under  the  provisions  of  the  homestead  law, 
and  foreign  emigration  will  be  quadrupled,  if  not  augmented  ten- 
fold. Millions  in  the  Old  World,  hungering  and  thirsting  after  the 
righteousness  of  free  institutions,  will  flock  to  the  sunny  South, 
and  mingle  there  with  the  swarms  of  our  own  people  in  pursuit  of 
new  homes  under  kindlier  skies.     Immigration  has   not  slackened, 

O  7 

even  during  this  war,  and  in  determining-  the  direction  it  will  take, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  settlements  have  very  nearly  reached 
their  limits  in  the  North  and  West.  Kansas  and  Nebraska  are 
border  States,  and  must  so  continue.  Their  storms,  and  droughts, 
and  desert  plains  give  a  pretty  distinct  hint  that  the  emigrant  must 
seek  his  Eldorado  in  latitudes  further  south.  In  the  new  North- 
western States  the  richest  lands  have  been  purchased,  and  vast 
portions  of  them  locked  up  by  speculators.  Their  distance  from 
the  great  markets  for  their  produce,  and  their  severe  winters,  will 
also  check  emigration  in  that  direction  and  incline  it  further  south, 
if  lands  can  be  procured  there  with  tolerable  facility.  The  rebel 
States  not  only  abound  in  cheap  and  fertile  land,  with  cheap  labor 
in  the  persons  of  the  freedmen  to  assist  in  its  cultivation,  but  they 
possess  great  mineral  resources.  They  have  also  extensive  lines  of 
railroads,  which,  in  connection  with  their  great  rivers,  bring  almost 
every  portion  of  their  territory  into  communication  with  the  sea. 

Mr.  Speaker,  nothing  can  atone  for  the  woes  and  sorrows  of  this 
war  but  the  thorough  reorganization  of  society  in  these  revolted 
States.  Now  is  the  time  to  begin  this  work.  We  must  not  only 
cut  up  slavery,  root  and  branch,  but  we  must  see  to  it  that  these 
teeming  regions  shall  be  studded  over  with  small  farms  and  tilled 
by  free  men.  We  must  remember  that  "  the  best  way  to  help  the 
poor  is  to  enable  them  to  help  themselves.'"  We  must  guard  the 
equal  rights  of  the  people  as  a  religious  duty,  for  "  Christianity  is 
the  root  of  all  democracy,  the  highest  fact  in  the  rights  of  man." 
Labor  must  be  rendered  honorable  and  gainful,  by  securing  to  the 
laborer  the  fruits  of  his  toil.  Instead  of  the  spirit  of  Caste  and 
the  law  of  Hate,  which  have  so  loner  blasted  these  regions,  we  must 
build  up  homogenous  communities  in  which  the  interest  of  each 
will  be  recognized  as  the  interest  of  all.  Instead  of  an  overshad- 
owing aristocracy,  founded  on  the  monopoly  of  the  soil  and  its 
dominion  over  the  poor,  we  must  have  no  order  of  nobility  but 
that  of  the  laboring  masses  of  the  country,  who  fight  its  battles  in 
war,  and  constitute  its  glory  and  its  strength  in  peace.  Instead  of 
large   estates,  widely  scattered   settlements,  wasteful  agriculture, 


HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  OX  LANDS  OF  REBELS.     225 

popular  ignorance,  political  and  social  degradation,  the  decay  of 
literature,  the  decline  of  manufactures  and  the  arts,  contempt  for 
honest  labor,  and  a  pampered  aristocracy,  we  must  have  small 
farms,  closely  associated  communities,  thrifty  tillage,  free  schools, 
social  independence,  a  healthy  literature,  flourishing  manufactures 
and  mechanic  arts,  respect  for  honest  labor,  and  equality  of  polit- 
ical rights.  These  ends,  to  a  great  extent,  are  provided  for  by  the 
bill  I  have  introduced,  and  no  measure  of  more  vital  interest  to 
the  people  has  ever  been  submitted  to  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States.  I  voted  for  the  bill  which  has  passed  this  House,  provid- 
ing for  a  Bureau  of  Emancipation,  but  I  must  regard  this  measure 
as  a  far  better  "  freedman's  bill  "  than  that  of  my  honorable  friend 
from  Massachusetts,  lor  it  provides  for  the  emancipation  of  all 
races,  and  the  freedom  of  labor  itself.  These  regions,  blighted  by 
treason,  must  be  cared  for  or  abandoned  by  the  General  Govern- 
ment. The  heaven-daring  conspiracy  of  rebels  in  arms  has 
placed  them,  or  will  place  them,  at  our  feet.  Shall  we  hand  them 
over  to  the  speculator,  in  the  hope  of  thereby  securing  a  revenue 
to  pay  our  national  debt  ?  I  have  shown  that  the  true  source  of 
revenue  is  the  cultivation  of  the  soil.  The  future  of  these  rebel- 
lious States,  involving  the  well-being  of  millions  for  generations  to 
come,  is  now  committed  to  our  hands.  We  can  reenact  over  them 
the  political  and  social  damnation  of  the  past,  or  predestinate  them 
to  the  blessedness  and  glory  of  a  grand  and  ever-unfolding  future. 
We  can  build  up  a  magnificent  constellation  of  free  common- 
wealths, whose  territory  can  support  a  population  of  more  than  one 
hundred  millions,  on  the  basis  of  free  labor  and  a  just  distribution 
of  land  among  the  people  ;  or  we  can  again  organize  society  after 
the  pattern  of  Europe,  and  thus  spare  the  hideous  cancer  which, 
in  the  words  of  Chateaubriand,  "  has  gnawed  social  order  since  the 
beginning  of  the  world."  Can  we  hesitate,  in  dealing  with  so 
fearful  an  alternative  ?  Shall  we  mock  the  Almighty  by  sporting 
with  the  heaven-permitted  privilege  now  placed  before  us  ?  Shall 
we  heap  curses  on  our  children,  when  blessings  are  within  cur 
grasp  ?  Sir,  let  us  prove  ourselves  worthy  of  our  day  and  of  our 
work.  Let  us  rise  to  the  full  height  of  our  sublime  opportunity, 
and  thus  make  ourselves,  under  Providence,  the  creators  of  a  new 
dispensation  of  liberty  and  peace.  Then,  in  the  eloquent  language 
of  Solicitor  Whiting,  "  The  hills  and  valleys  of  the  South,  purified 
and  purged  of  all  the  guilt  of  the  past,  clothed  with  a  new  and 
richer  verdure,  will  lift  up  their  voices  in  thanksgiving  to  the 
Author  of  all  good,  who  has  granted  to  them,  amidst  the  agonies 

15 


226     HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OP  REBELS. 

of  civil  war,  a  new  birth  and  a  glorious  transfiguration.  Then, 
the  people  of  the  North  and  the  people  of  the  South  will  again 
become  one  people,  united  in  interests,  in  pursuits,  in  intelligence, 
in  religion,  and  in  patriotic  devotion  to  our  common  country." 

As  regards  the  particular  provisions  of  the  bill  before  us,  I  need 
not  occupy  much  of  the  time  of  this  House.  It  has  been  printed, 
and  gentlemen  have  had  the  opportunity  of  examining  it  for  them- 
selves. It  has  been  prepared  with  much  care,  and  with  the  assist- 
ance of  some  of  the  best  lawyers  in  the  Union.  The  first  and 
second  sections  of  the  bill  provide  the  methods  by  which  the  title 
of  rebel  land-owners  shall  vest  in  the  United  States  under  the  acts 
of  Congress  now  in  force  on  the  subject  of  confiscation  and  rev- 
enue. I  shall  not  discuss  the  power  of  the  government  thus  to 
acquire  the  title  to  this  land,  for  it  cannot  be  controverted  without 
overturning  all  the  legislation  of  the  last  Congress  on  the  subject 
of  confiscation,  internal  revenue,  and  the  collection  of  taxes  in 
insurrectionary  districts.  I  have,  in  fact,  already  argued  the  ques- 
tion of  power,  in  what  I  have  said  of  our  relations  to  the  rebels  as 
belligerents. 

The  third  section  provides  for  the  survey  of  the  lands  in  ques.' 
tion  as  nearly  as  may  be  in  forty-acre  lots.  This  is  deemed  neces- 
sary from  the  fact  that  in  several  of  the  insurrectionary  districts 
the  old  system  of  irregular  surveys  exists,  and  not  the  present  or 
rectangular  system.  The  section  also  provides  for  the  appoint- 
ment of  necessary  officers  and  their  compensation,  and  contem- 
plates the  application  and  use  of  the  machinery  of  the  General 
Land  Office  within  such  districts. 

The  fourth  section  gives  a  homestead  of  eighty  acres  to  all  sol- 
diers who  shall  have  served  in  the  army  or  navy  two  years,  and 
forty  acres  to  all  persons  who  shall  have  aided  in  the  military  ser- 
vice against  the  rebels  for  any  period  of  time,  either  as  soldiers  or 
laborers.  It  also  extends  the  provisions  of  the  Homestead  Act  of 
1862  over  these  lands,  thus  avoiding  any  new  and  cumbersome 
regulations,  and  exacts  a  continuous  residence  of  five  years  to 
consummate  the  title. 

The  fifth  section  provides  that  after  keeping  the  lands  open  for 
homesteads  for  five  years,  those  remaining  vacant  shall  be  sold  at 
public  sale.  It  prohibits  the  sacrifice  of  them  by  fixing  a  minimum 
price,  which  they  must  bring.  It  also  requires  the  purchaser  to 
comply  with  the  Preemption  Act  of  1841,  prior  to  his  receiving  a 
patent,  thus  demanding  a  residence  on  the  land,  and  precluding  an 
accumulation  of  it  in  the  hands  of  speculators.     These  safeguards 


HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OF  REBELS.     227 

look  to  the  benefit  of  the  mass,  and  not  the  interests  of  a  few,  even 
after  homesteads  have  been  selected.  This  section  also  provides 
that  proof  of  loyalty  shall  be  made  by  all  persons  claiming  rights 
under  the  bill. 

The  sixth  section,  as  will  be  seen,  requires  no  comment.  The 
seventh  requires  persons  selecting  improved  lands  to  pay  for  what- 
ever may  be  found  of  value  on  them,  after  an  appraisement  by 
persons  regularly  appointed  for  the  purpose,  and  to  pay  the  costs 
occasioned  by  the  proceeding.  The  effect  will  be  that  the  expenses 
created  by  the  act  will  be  paid  into  the  Treasury  of  the  United 
States,  and  may  exceed  the  expenditures  which  will  be  connected 
with  its  operations. 

The  eighth  section  establishes  an  obviously  just  if  not  necessary 
rule  of  construction  as  to  persons  of  color,  giving  them  equal  rights 
with  white  men,  and  extends  the  inchoate  rights  of  a  settler  to  his 
heirs,  or  widow,  who  may  complete  payments  and  make  proof. 

The  ninth  section  places  the  execution  of  the  act  in  the  Depart- 
ment of  the  Interior,  or  that  more  immediately  connected  with  the 
land  system  ;  and  the  last  section  repeals  all  laws  inconsistent  with 
the  provisions  of  this  act.  I  will  only  add,  that  the  act  has  noth- 
ing to  do  with  real  estate  in  towns,  cities,  and  villages,  which  will, 
of  course,  continue  to  be  sold  as  heretofore. 

These,  Mr.  Speaker,  are  the  material  provisions  of  the  bill. 
They  embody  principles  which  I  have  endeavored  to  vindicate,  by 
argument  and  by  fact.  If  I  am  right,  then  every  moment  of 
delay  is  a  golden  opportunity  wasted  forever.  Under  the  present 
policy  of  the  government  every  passing  day  bears  witness  to  the 
transfer  of  thousands  of  acres  of  forfeited  lands  to  speculators. 
According  to  Judge  Underwood,  more  than  two  hundred  millions 
of  dollars'  worth  of  property  in  the  State  of  Virginia  alone,  chiefly 
real  estate,  should  be  confiscated  by  the  government.  Thousands 
of  acres  are  now  being  sold  in  the  vicinity  of  this  city.  In  Sep- 
tember last,  the  President  of  the  United  States  issued  instructions 
to  the  tax  commissioners  of  South  Carolina,  providing  for  the  sale 
of  40,845  acres,  of  which  24,816  acres  were  to  be  sold  to  the 
highest  bidder,  in  tracts  of  320  acres.  The  remainder  was  to  be 
sold  to  the  heads  of  African  families,  for  such  sums,  not  less  than 
one  dollar  and  twenty- five  cents  per  acre,  as  the  government 
should  see  fit  to  demand.  These  sales  are  portions  of  a  lot  of  76,- 
775  acres  offered  on  the  9th  of  last  March,  when  16,479  acres 
were  sold  to  speculators  ;  making  an  aggregate  of  40,795  acres 
which  will  have  been  sold   in  large  tracts,  leaving  for  the  negro 


228     HOMESTEADS  FOR  SOLDIERS  ON  LANDS  OF  REBELS. 

only  16,479  acres,  which  he  may  buy,  if  he  can  raise  the  money  to 
pay  the  price  fixed  by  the  government.  Such  transactions  as 
these,  in  Port  Royal,  where  so  much  has  been  hoped  for  the  freed- 
man,  are  most  significant.  If  any  people  have  a  divine  right  to 
these  tropical  lands,  they  are  the  slaves  who  have  bought  them, 
over  and  over,  by  their  sweat  and  toil  and  blood,  through  centuries 
of  oppression.  Degraded  and  embruted  by  servitude,  mere  chil- 
dren in  knowledge  and  self-help,  we  require  them  to  compete  for 
their  homesteads  with  the  sharpened  faculties  of  the  white  specu- 
lator, schooled  in  avarice  by  generations  of  money  getting,  who 
believes  the  almighty  dollar  is  the  only  living  and  true  God,  and 
would  "  run  into  the  mouth  of  hell  after  a  bale  of  cotton."  Sir, 
our  government  is  false  to  its  trust,  infidel  to  its  mission,  if  it  shall 
lend  its  high  sanction  to  such  wanton  injustice  and  wrong.  Had  I 
the  power  I  would  give  a  free  home  on  the  forfeited  lands  of  rebels 
to  every  bondman  in  the  insurrectionary  districts.  Let  the  gov- 
ernment, at  least,  give  him  an  equal  chance  with  our  own  race,  in 
the  settlement  and  enjoyment  of  his  native  land.  Less  than  this 
would  be  a  mockery  of  justice  and  an  insult  both  to  decency  and 
humanity.  He  is  excluded  from  the  Northern  States  and  Terri- 
tories by  their  uncongenial  climate,  by  his  attachments  to  his  birth- 
place, and  by  Anglo-Saxon  domination  and  enterprise.  Let  the 
government,  which  has  so  long  connived  at  his  oppression,  now 
make  sure  to  him  a  free  homestead  on  the  land  of  his  oppressor. 
Let  us  deal  justly  with  the  African,  and  thereby  lay  claim  to  jus- 
tice for  ourselves.  Let  us  remember,  in  the  lano-oacre  of  our 
patriotic  Chief  Magistrate,  that  "  We  cannot  escape  history.  We 
of  this  Congress  and  of  this  administration  will  be  remembered  in 
spite  of  ourselves.  No  personal  significance  or  insignificance  can 
spare  one  or  another  of  us.  The  fiery  trial  through  which  we 
pass  will  light  us  down,  in  honor  or  dishonor,  to  the  latest  genera- 
tion. In  giving  freedom  to  the  slave,  we  assure  freedom  to  the 
free ;  honorable  alike  in  what  we  give  and  what  we  preserve. 
We  shall  nobly  save,  or  meanly  lose,  the  last  best  hope  of  earth. 
Other  means  may  succeed  ;  this  could  not  fail.  The  way  is  plain, 
peaceful, 'generous,  just,  —  a  way  which,  if  followed,  the  world  will 
forever  applaud,  and  God  must  forever  bless." 


RADICALISM     AND     CONSERVATISM  —  THE 
TRUTH    OF    HISTORY    VINDICATED. 

IN   COMMITTEE   OF   THE   WHOLE  ON   THE    STATE   OF   THE   UNION,  FEB- 
RUARY 7,  1865. 

[This  parallel  between  Radicalism  and  Conservatism,  drawn  after  the  government 
had  fairly  changed  its  base,  is  believed  to  be  as  just  as  it  was  timely.  A  cordial  and 
handsome  tribute  to  the  anti-slavery  pioneers  fitly  closes  the  review.] 

Mr.  Chairman,  —  Perhaps  no  task  could  be  more  instructive 
or  profitable,  in  these  culminatrng  days  of  the  rebellion,  than  a 
review  of  the  shifting  phases  of  thought  and  policy  which  have 
guided  the  administration  in  its  endeavors  to  crush  it.  Such  a 
retrospect  will  help  us  vindicate  the  real  truth  of  history,  both  as 
to  measures  and  men.  It  will  bring  out,  in  the  strongest  colors, 
the  contrast  between  Radicalism  and  Conservatism,  as  rival  polit- 
ical forces,  each  maintaining  a  varying  control  over  the  conduct  of 
the  war.  It  will,  at  the  same  time,  point  out  and  emphasize  those 
pregnant  lessons  of  the  struggle  which  may  best  supply  the  govern- 
ment with  counsel  in  its  further  prosecution.  The  faithful  per- 
formance of  this  task  demands  plainness  of  speech  ;  and  I  shall  not 
shrink  from  my  accustomed  use  of  it,  in  the  interests  of  truth  and 
freedom. 

At  the  beginning  of  this  war,  Mr.  Chairman,  neither  of  the 
parties  to  it  comprehended  its  character  and  magnitude.  Its  actual 
history  has  been  an  immeasurable  surprise  to  both,  and  to  the 
whole  civilized  world.  The  rebels  evidently  expected  to  make 
short  work  of  it.  Judging  us  by  our  habitual  and  long-continued 
submission  to  Southern  domination,  and  confiding  in  the  multiplied 
assurances  of  sympathy  and  help  which  they  had  received  from 
their  faithful  allies  in  the  North,  they  regarded  the  work  of  dis- 
memberment as  neither  difficult  nor  expensive.  They  did  not 
dream  of  the  grand  results  which  have  proceeded  from  their  mad 
enterprise.  Nor  does  their  delusion  seem  to  have  been  at  all  strange 
or  unnatural.  Ceftainly,  it  was  not  more  remarkable  than  the 
infatuation  of  the  administration,  and  its  conservative  friends.  The 
government  understood  the  conflict  as  little,  and  misunderstood  it 


230  RADICALISM   AND   CONSERVATISM. 

as  absolute]}7,  as  its  foes.  This,  sir,  is  one  of  the  lessons  of  the  war 
which  I  think  it  worth  while  to  have  remembered.  This  revolt,  it 
was  believed,  was  simply  a  new  and  enlarged  edition  of  Southern 
bluster.  The  government  did  not  realize  the  inexorable  necessity 
of  actual  war,  because  it  lacked  the  moral  vision  to  perceive  the 
real  nature  of  the  contest.  To  every  suggestion  of  so  dire  an 
event  it  turned  an  averted  face  and  a  deaf  ear.  It  hoped  to  restore 
order  by  making  a  show  of  war,  without  actually  calling  into  play 
the  terrible  enginery  of  war.  It  trusted  in  the  form,  without  the 
power  of  war,  just  as  some  people  have  trusted  in  the  form,  with- 
out the  power  of  godliness.  It  will  be  remembered  that  just  be- 
fore the  battle  of  Ball's  Bluff,  General  McClellan  ordered  Colonel 
Stone  to  "  make  a  slight  demonstration  against  the  rebels,"  which 
might  "have  the  effect  to  drive  them  from  Leesbunr."  The  gov- 
ernment  seems  to  have  pursued  a  like  policy  in  dealing  with  the 
rebellion  itself.  "  A  slight  demonstration,"  it  was  believed,  would 
"  have  the  effect"  to  an  est  the  rebels  in  their  madness,  and  rees- 
tablish order  and  peace  in  about  "  sixty  davs,"  without  allowing 
them  to  be  seriously  hurt,  and  without  unchaining  the  tiger  of  war 
at  all.  The  philosophy  of  General  Patterson,  who  kindly  advised 
that  the  war  on  our  part  should  be  "  conducted  on  peace  princi- 
ples," was  by  no  means  out  of  fashion  with  our  rulers,  and  the  con- 
servative leaders  of  opinion  generally.  Even  the  Commander-in- 
chief  of  our  army  and  navy  scouted  the  idea  of  putting  down  the 
rebellion  by  military  power.  He  thought  the  country  was  to  be 
saved  by  giving  up  the  principles  it  had  fairly  won  by  the  ballot  in 
the  year  1860,  and  to  the  maintenance  of  which  the  new  adminis- 
tration was  solemnly  pledged.  He  believed  in  "  conciliation,"  in 
"  compromise,"  —  the  meanest  word  in  the  whole  vocabulary  of 
our  politics,  except,  perhaps,  the  word  "conservative,"  — and  had 
far  less  faith  in  the  help  of  bullets  and  bayonets  in  managing  the 
rebels  than  in  the  power  of  our  brotherly  love  to  melt  their  sus- 
ceptible hearts,  and  woo  them  back,  gently  and  lovingly,  to  a  sense 
of  their  madness  and  their  crime.  Our  distinguished  Secretary  of 
State  declared  that  "  none  but  a  despotic  or  imperial  government 
would  seek  to  subjugate  thoroughly  disaffected  sovereignties." 
The  policy  of  coercing  the  revolted  States  was  disavowed  by  the 
President  himself  in  his  message  to  Congress  of  July,  18G1. 

#Nor  did  the  Legislative  Department  of  the  government,  at  that 
time,  disagree  with  the  Executive.  On  the  22*d  day  of  July  of  the 
same  year,  —  and  I  say  it  with  sorrow  and  shame,  —  on  the  very 
morning  following  the  first  battle  of  Bull  Run,  the  House  of  Rep- 


RADICALISM   AND    CONSERVATISM.  231 

resentatives,  speaking  in  the  form  of  solemn  legislative  resolves,  as 
did  the  Senate  two  days  later,  declared  that  it  was  not  the  purpose 
of  the  government  to  "  subjugate  "  the  villains  who  began  this  work 
of  organized  and  inexcusable  rapine  and  murder.  Indeed,  it  was 
not  then  the  fashion  to  call  them  villains.  In  the  very  polite  and 
gingerly  phrase  of  the  times  they  were  styled  "  our  misguided  fel- 
low-citizens," and  "  our  erring  Southern  brethren,"  while  the  rebel 
States  themselves  were  lovingly  referred  to  as  "  our  wayward  sis- 
ters." The  truth  is,  that  for  about  a  year  and  a  half  of  this  war 
the  policy  of  tenderness  to  the  rebels  so  swayed  the  administration 
that  it  seemed  far  less  intent  upon  crushing  the  rebellion  by  arms, 
than  upon  contriving  "  how  not  to  do  it."  General  McClellan, 
who  so  long  palsied  the  energies  and  balked  the  purpose  of  the 
nation,  would  not  allow  an  unkind  word  to  be  uttered  in  his  pres- 
ence against  the  rebel  leaders.  If  an  officer  or  soldier  was  heard 
to  speak  disrespectfully  of  the  great  Confederate  chief,  he  was 
summarily  reprimanded,  while  the  unrivaled  reprobate  and  grand- 
est of  national  cut-throats  was  pronounced  a  high-souled  gentleman 
and  man  of  honor  !  Not  the  spirit  of  war,  but  the  spirit  of  peace, 
seemed  to  dictate  our  principles  of  action  and  measures  of  policy 
toward  the  men  who  had  resolved,  at  whatever  hazard  or  sacrifice, 
to  break  up  the  government  by  force.  This  policy,  sir,  had  it 
been  continued,  would  have  proved  the  certain  triumph  of  the 
rebel  cause.  With  grand  armies  in  the  field,  and  all  the  costly 
machinery  of  war  in  our  hands,  our  opportunities  were  sinned 
away  by  inactivity  and  delay,  while  the  "rebels  gathered  strength 
from  our  indecision  and  weakness.  A  major-general  in  our  army, 
and  as  brave  and  patriotic  a  man  as  lives,  said  to  me  in  the  early 
stages  of  the  war  that  the  grand  obstacle  to  our  success  was  the 
lack  of  resentment  on  our  part  toward  traitors.  He  said  we  did 
not  adequately  hate  them  ;  and  he  urged  me,  if  in  any  degree  in 
my  power,  to  breathe  into  the  hearts  of  the  people  in  the  loyal 
States  a  spirit  of  righteous  indignation  and  wrath  toward  the  rebels, 
commensurate  with  the  unmatched  enormity  of  their  deeds.  This 
spirit,  Mr.  Chairman,  was  a  military  necessity.  The  absence  of  it 
furnishes  the  best  explanation  of  our  failure  during  the  period  re- 
ferred to,  while  its  acceptance  by  the  government  inaugurated  the 
new  policy  which  has  ever  since  been  giving  us  victories. 

That  this  sickly  policy  of  an  inoffensive  war  has  naturally  pro- 
longed the  struggle,  and  <rreatly  auo-mented  its  cost  in  blood  and 
treasure,  no  one  can  doubt.  That  it  belongs,  with  its  entire  legacy 
of  frightful  results,  exclusively  to  the  conservative  element  in  our 


232  RADICALISM   AND    CONSERVATISM. 

politics,  which  at  first  ruled  the  government,  is  equally  certain. 
The  radical  men  saw  at  first,  as  clearly  as  they  see  to-day,  the 
character  and  spirit  of  this  rebel  revolt.  The  massacre  at  Fort 
Pillow,  the  starvation  of  our  soldiers  at  Richmond,  and  the  whole 
black  catalogue  of  rebel  atrocities,  have  only  been  so  many  verified 
predictions  of  the  men  who  had  studied  the  institution  of  slavery, 
and  who  regarded  the  rebellion  as  the  natural  fruit  and  culmination 
of  its  Christless  career.  And  hence  it  was  that  in  the  very  begin- 
ning of  the  Avar,  radical  men  were  in  favor  of  its  vigorous  prose- 
cution. They  knew  the  foe  with  whom  we  had  to  wrestle.  In 
language  employed  on  this  floor  more  than  three  years  ago,  they 
knew  that  "  sooner  than  fail  in  their  purpose  the  rebels  would  light 
up  heaven  itself  with  the  red  glare  of  the  Pit,  and  convert  the  earth 
into  a  carnival  of  devils."  They  knew  that  "  every  weapon  in  the 
armory  of  war  must  be  grasped,  and  every  arrow  in  our  quiver 
sped  toward  the  heart  of  a  rebel."  They  knew  that  "  all  tender- 
ness to  such  a  foe  is  treason  to  our  cause,  murder  to  our  people, 
faithlessness  to  the  grandest  and  holiest  trust  ever  committed  to  a 
free  people."  They  knew  that  "  the  war  should  be  made  just  as 
terrific  to  the  rebels  as  possible,  consistently  with  the  laws  of  war, 
not  as  a  work  of  vengeance,  but  of  mercy,  and  the  surest  means 
of  our  triumph."  They  knew  that  in  struggling  with  such  a  foe 
we  were  shut  up  to  one  grand  and  inevitable  necessity  and  duty, 
and  that  was  entire  and  absolute  subjugation.  All  this  was  avowed 
and  insisted  upon  by  the  earnest  men  who  understood  the  nature 
of  the  conflict,  and  as  persistently  disavowed  and  repudiated  by  the 
government  and  its  conservative  advisers. 

But  a  time  came  when  its  lessons  had  to  be  unlearned.  In  the 
school  of  trial  it  was  forced  to  admit  that  war  does  not  mean  peace, 
but  exactly  the  opposite  of  peace.  Slowly,  and  step  by  step,  it 
yielded  up  its  theories  and  brought  itself  face  to  face  with  the  stern 
facts  of  the  crisis.  The  government  no  longer  gets  frightened  at 
the  word  subjugate,  because  of  its  literal  etymology,  but  is  man- 
fully and  successfully  endeavoring  to  place  the  yoke  of  the  Consti- 
tution upon  the  unbaptized  necks  of  the  scoundrels  who  have 
thrown  it  off.  The  war  is  now  recognized  as  a  struggle  of  num- 
bers, of  desperate  physical  violence,  to  be  fought  out  to  the  bitter 
end,  without  stopping  to  count  its  cost  in  money  or  in  blood.  Both 
the  people  and  our  armies,  under  this  new  dispensation,  have  been 
learning  how  to  hate  rebels  as  Christian  patriots  ought  to  have 
done  from  the  beginning.  Thev  have  been  learning  how  to  hate 
rebel  sympathizers  also,  and  to  brand  them  as  even  meaner  than 


RADICALISM   AND   CONSERVATISM.  233 

rebels  outright.  They  regard  the  open-throated  traitor,  who  stakes 
his  life,  his  property,  his  all,  upon  the  success  of  his  conspiracy 
against  the  Constitution  and  the  rights  of  man,  as  a  more  tolerable 
character  than  the  skulking  miscreant  who  in  his  heart  wishes  the 
rebellion  God-speed,  while  masquerading  in  the  hypocritical  dis- 
guise of  loyalty.  Had  the  government  been  animated  by  a  like 
spirit  at  the  beginning  of  the  outbreak,  practically  accepting  the 
truth  that  there  can  be  no  middle  ground  between  treason  and 
loyalty,  rebel  sympathizers  would  have  given  the  country  far  less 
trouble  than  they  have  done.  A  little  wholesome  severity,  sum- 
marily administered,  would  have  been  a  most  sovereign  panacea. 
On  this  point  the  people  were  in  advance  of  the  administration, 
and  they  are  to-day.  Their  earnestness  has  not  yet  found  a  com- 
plete and  authoritative  expression  in  the  action  of  the  government. 
A  system  of  retaliation,  which  would  have  been  a  measure  of  real 
mercy,  has  not  yet  been  adopted.  Our  cause  is  not  wholly  rescued 
from  the  control  of  conservative  politicians  and  generals.  Much 
remains  to  be  done  ;  but  far  more,  certainly,  has  already  been  ac- 
complished. The  times  of  brotherly  love  toward  rebels  in  arms 
have  gone  by  forever.  Such  men  as  McClellan,  Buell,  and  Fitz- 
John  Porter,  are  generally  out  of  the  way,  and  men  who  believe 
in  fighting  rebels  are  in  active  command.  This  revolution  in  the 
war  policy  of  the  government,  as  already  observed,  was  absolutely 
necessary  to  the  salvation  of  our  cause  ;  and  the  country  will  not 
soon  forget  those  earnest  men  who  at  first  comprehended  the  crisis 
and  the  duty,  and  persistently  urged  a  vigorous  policy,  suited  to 
remorseless  and  revolutionary  violence,  till  the  government  felt 
constrained  to  embrace  it. 

But  a  vigorous  prosecution  of  the  war,  Mr.  Chairman,  was  not 
enough.  While  this  struggle  is  one  of  numbers  and  of  violence, 
it  is  likewise,  and  still  more  emphatically,  a  war  of  ideas;  a  con- 
flict between  two  forms  of  civilization,  each  wrestling  for  the 
mastery  of  the  country.  No  one  now  pretends  to  dispute  this, 
nor  is  it  easy  to  understand  how  any  one  could  ever  have  failed  to 
perceive  it.  But  the  government,  in  the  beginning,  did  not  believe 
it.  It  tried,  with  all  its  might,  not  to  believe  it,  and  to  persuade 
the  world  to  disbelieve  it.  It  insisted  that  the  real  cause  of  the 
war  did  not  cause  it  at  all.  The  rebellion  was  the  work  of  chance ; 
a  stupendous  accident,  leaping  into  life  full  grown,  without  father 
or  mother,  without  any  discoverable  genesis.  It  was  a  huge,  black, 
portentous,  national  riot,  which  must  be  suppressed,  but  nobody 
was  to  be  allowed  to  say  one  word  about  the  causes  which  pro- 


234  RADICALISM   AND   CONSERVATISM. 

duced  it,  or  the  issues  involved  in  the  struggle.  Silence  was  to  be 
our  supreme  wisdom.  Hence  it  was  that  the  government,  speak- 
ing through  its  high  functionaries,  declared  that  the  slavery  ques- 
tion was  not  involved  in  the  quarrel,  and  that  every  slave  in 
bondage  would  remain  in  exactly  the  same  condition  after  the  war 
as  before.  Hence  it  was  that,  when  a  celebrated  proclamation 
was  issued,  giving  freedom  to  the  slaves  of  rebels  in  Missouri,  it 
was  revoked  by  the  government  in  order  to  please  the  State  of 
Kentucky,  and  placate  the  power  that  began  the  war.  Hence, 
under  General  Halleck's  "  Order  No.  3,"  which  remained  in  force 
more  than  a  year,  the  swarms  of  contrabands  who  came  thronging 
to  our  lines,  tendering  us  the  use  of  their  muscles  and  the  secrets 
of  the  rebel  prison-house,  were  driven  away  by  our  commanders. 
Hence  it  was  that  our  soldiers  were  compelled  to  serve  as  slave- 
hounds  in  chasing  down  fugitives  and  sending  them  back  to  rebel 
masters,  and  that  General  McClellan,  who  always  loved  slavery 
more  than  he  loved  his  country,  and  who  declared  he  would  put 
down  slave  insurrections  "  with  an  iron  hand,"  was  continued  as 
Commander-in-chief  of  our  armies  long  months  after  the  country 
desired  to  spew  him  out.  Hence,  likewise,  so  many  thousands  of 
our  soldiers  were  compelled  to  dig  and  ditch  in  the  swamps  of  the 
Chickahominy  till  the  cold  sweat  of  death  gathered  on  the  handle 
of  the  spade,  while  swarms  of  stalwart  negroes,  able  to  relieve 
them  and  eager  to  do  so,  were  denied  the  privilege,  lest  it  should 
offend  the  nostrils  of  democratic  gentility,  and  give  aid  and  com- 
fort to  the  abolitionists.  Hence  it  was  that  the  President,  instead 
of  striking  at  slavery  as  a  military  necessity,  and  while  rebuking 
that  polic}r  in  his  dealings  with  Hunter  and  Fremont,  was  at  the 
same  time  so  earnestly  espousing  chimerical  projects  for  the  coloni- 
zation of  negroes,  coupled  with  the  policy  of  gradual  and  compen- 
sated emancipation,  which  should  take  place  some  time  before  the 
(  year  1900,  if  the  slaveholders  should  be  willing.  Hence  it  was 
that  very  soon  after  the  administration  had  been  installed  in  power 
it  began  to  lose  sight  of  the  principles  on  which  it  had  triumphed 
in  1860,  allowing  four  fifths  of  the  offices  of  the  army  and  navy  to 
be  held  by  men  of  known  hostility  to  those  principles,  while  the 
various  departments  of  the  government  in  this  city  were  largely 
filled  by  rebel  sympathizers.  Hence  it  was  that  for  nearly  two 
years  of  this  war  the  government,  while  smiting  the  rebels  with 
one  hand,  was  with  the  other  guarding  the  slave  property  and 
protecting  the  constitutional  rights  of  the  men  who  had  renounced 
the  Constitution,  and  ceased  to  have  any  rights  under  it  save  the 


RADICALISM   AND   CONSERVATISM.  235 

right  to  its  penalty  against  traitors.  Hence  it  was  that  during  the 
greater  part  of  this  time  the  administration  stood  upon  the  platform 
and  urged  the  policy  of  "  The  Constitution  as  it  is  and  the  Union 
as  it  was,"  which  the  nation  so  overwhelmingly  repudiated  in  the 
late  Presidential  contest.  Hence  it  was,  finally,  that  the  songs  of 
Whittier  could  not  be  sung  in  our  armies  ;  that  slavery  was  every- 
where dealt  with  by  the  government  as  the  dear  child  of  its  love  ; 
and  that  our  rulers  seemed,  with  matchless  impiety,  to  hope  for  the 
favor  of  God  without  laying  hold  of  the  conscience  of  our  quarrel, 
and  by  coolly  kicking  it  out  of  doors !  Sir,  I  believe  it  safe  to  say 
that  this  madness  cost  the  nation  the  precious  sacrifice  of  fifty 
thousand  soldiers,  who  have  gone  up  to  the  throne  of  God  as  wit- 
nesses against  the  horrid  infatuation  that  so  long  shaped  the  policy 
of  the  government  in  resisting  this  slaveholders'  rebellion. 

But  here,  again,  Mr.  Chairman,  the  government  had  to  unlearn 
its  first  lessons.  Its  purpose  to  crush  the  rebellion  and  spare 
slavery  was  found  to  be  utterly  suicidal  to  our  cause.  It  was  a 
purpose  to  accomplish  a  moral  impossibility,  and  was  therefore 
prosecuted,  if  not  conceived,  in  the  interest  of  the  rebels.  It  was 
an  attempt  to  marry  treason  and  loyalty  ;  for  the  rebellion  is 
slavery,  armed  with  the  powers  of  war,  organized  for  wholesale 
schemes  of  aggression,  and  animated  by  the  overflowing  fullness  of 
its  infernal  genius.  The  strength  of  our  cause  lies  in  its  righteous- 
ness, and  therefore  no  bargain  with  the  devil  could  possibly  give  it 
aid.  Through  great  suffering  and  sacrifice,  individual  and  national, 
our  rulers  learned  that  there  is  but  "  one  strong  thing  here  below» 
the  just  thing,  the  true  thing,"  and  that  God  would  not  allow 
these  severed  States  to  be  reunited  without  the  abandonment,  for- 
ever, of  our  great  national  sin.  This  was  a  difficult  lesson,  but  as 
it  was  gradually  mastered  the  government  "  changed  its  base."  It 
became  disenchanted.  Congress  took  the  lead  in  ushering;  in  the 
new  dispensation.  A  new  article  of  war  was  enacted,  forbidding 
our  armies  from  returning  fugitive  slaves.  Slavery  was  abolished 
in  the  District  of  Columbia,  and  prohibited  in  our  national  Terri- 
tories, where  it  had  been  planted  by  the  dogma  of  popular  sover- 
eignty and  the  Dred  Scott  decision.  Our  federal  judiciary  was 
so  reorganized  as  to  make  sure  this  anti-slavery  legislation  of  Con- 
gress. The  confiscation  of  slaves  was  provided  for,  and  freedom 
offered  to  all  who  would  come  over  and  help  us,  either  as  laborers 
or  soldiers,  thus  annulling  the  famous  or  rather  infamous  order  of 
General  Halleck,  already  referred  to.  The  Fugitive  Slave  Law 
was  at  first  made  void  as  to  the  slaves  of  rebels,  and  finally  re- 


236  RADICALISM   AND   CONSERVATISM. 

pealed  altogether,  with  the  old  law  of  1793.  The  coastwise  slave- 
trade,  a  frightful  system  of  home  piracy,  carried  on  by  authority  of 
Congress  since  the  jeav  1807,  was  totally  abolished.  The  right  of 
testimony  in  our  federal  courts,  and  to  sue  and  be  sued,  was  con- 
ferred upon  negroes.  Their  employment  as  soldiers  was  at  last 
systematically  provided  for,  and  their  pay  at  length  made  the  same 
as  that  of  white  soldiers.  The  independence  of  Hayti  and  Liberia 
was  recognized,  and  new  measures  taken  to  put  an  end  to  the 
African  slave-trade.  In  thus  wiping  out  our  code  of  national  slave 
laws,  acknowledging  the  manhood  of  the  negro,  and  recognizing 
slavery  as  the  enemy  of  our  peace,  Congress  emphatically  rebuked 
the  policy  which  had  sought  to  ignore  it,  and  to  shield  it  from  the 
destructive  hand  of  the  war  instigated  by  itself;  while  it  opened 
the  way  for  further  and  inevitable  measures  of  justice,  looking  to 
his  complete  emancipation  from  the  dominion  of  Anglo-Saxon 
prejudice,  the  repeal  of  all  special  legislation  intended  for  his 
injury,  and  his  absolute  restoration  to  equal  rights  with  the  white 
man  as  a  citizen  as  well  as  a  soldier. 

Meanwhile,  the  President  had  been  giving  the  subject  his  sober 
second  thought,  and  reconsidering  his  position  at  the  beginning  of 
the  conflict.  Instead  of  affirming,  as  at  first,  that  the  question  of 
slavery  was  not  involved  in  the  struggle,  he  gradually  perceived, 
and  finally  admitted,  that  it  was  at  once  the  cause  of  the  war  and 
the  obstacle  to  peace.  Instead  of  resolving  to  save  the  Union  with 
slavery,  he  finally  resolved  to  save  the  Union  without  it,  and  by  its 
destruction.  Instead  of  entertaining  the  country  with  projects  of 
gradual  and  distant  emancipation,  conditioned  upon  compensation 
to  the  master  and  the  colonization  of  the  freedmen,  he  himself 
finally  launched  the  policy  of  immediate  and  unconditional  libera- 
tion. Instead  of  recoiling  from  "  radical  and  extreme  measures," 
and  "  a  remorseless  revolutionary  conflict,"  he  at  last  marched  up 
to  the  full  height  of  the  national  emergency,  and  proclaimed  "  to 
all  whom  it  may  concern,"  that  slavery  must  perish.  Instead  of 
a  constitutional  amendment  for  the  purpose  of  eternizing  the  insti- 
tution in  the  Republic,  indorsed  by  him  in  his  inaugural  message, 
he  became  the  zealous  advocate  of  a  constitutional  amendment 
abolish  in  o-  it  forever.  Instead  of  committing  the  fortunes  of  the 
war  to  pro-slavery  commanders,  whose  hearts  were  not  in  the 
work,  he  learned  how  to  dispense  with  their  services,  and  find  the 
proper  substitutes.  These  forward  movements  were  not  ventured 
upon  hastily,  but  after  much  hesitation  and  apparent  reluctance. 
Not  suddenly,  but  following  great  deliberation  and  many  misgiv- 


RADICALISM   AND    CONSERVATISM.  237 

ings,  he  issued  his  proclamation  of  freedom.  Months  afterward 
he  doubted  its  wisdom ;  but  it  was  a  grand  step  forward,  which  at 
once  severed  his  relations  with  his  old  conservative  friends,  and 
linked  his  fortunes  thenceforward  to  those  of  the  men  of  ideas  and 
of  progress.  Going  hand  in  hand  with  Congress  in  the  gi'eat  ad- 
vance measures  referred  to,  or  acquiescing  in  their  adoption,  the 
whole  policy  of  the  administration  has  been  revolutionized.  Abo- 
litionism and  loyalty  are  now  accepted  as  convertible  terms,  and  so 
are  treason  and  slavery.  Our  covenant  with  death  is  annulled. 
Our  national  partnership  with  Satan  has  been  dissolved  ;  and  just 
in  proportion  as  this  has  been  done,  and  an  alliance  sought  with 
divine  Providence,  has  the  cause  of  our  country  prospered.  In  a 
word,  Radicalism  has  saved  our  nation  from  the  political  damnation 
and  ruin  to  which  Conservatism  would  certainly  have  consigned  it ; 
while  the  mistakes  and  failures  of  the  administration  stand  con- 
fessed in  its  new  policy,  which  alone  can  vindicate  its  wisdom, 
command  the  respect  and  gratitude  of  the  people,  and  save  it  from 
humiliation  and  disgrace. 

Mr.  Chairman,  these  lessons  of  the  past  suggest  the  true  moral 
of  this  great  conflict,  and  make  the  way  of  the  future  plain.  They 
demand  a  vigorous  prosecution  of  the  war  by  all  the  powers  of  war, 
and  that  the  last  vestige  of  slavery  shall  be  scourged  out  of  life.  Let 
the  administration  falter  on  either  of  these  points,  and  the  people 
will  disown  its  policy.  They  have  not  chosen  the  President  for 
another  term  through  any  secondary  or  merely  personal  considera- 
tions. In  the  presence  of  so  grand  an  issue,  men  were  nothing. 
They  had  no  faith  in  General  McClellan  and  the  party  leaders  at 
his  heels.  They  had  little  faith  in  the  early  policy  of  Mr.  Lincoln, 
when  Democratic  ideas  ruled  his  administration,  and  the  power  of 
slavery  held  him  in  its  grasp.  Had  his  appeal  to  the  people  been 
made  two  years  earlier,  he  would  have  been  as  overwhelmingly 
repudiated  as  he  has  been  gloriously  indorsed.  The  people  sustain 
him  now,  because  of  their  assured  faith  that  he  will  not  hesitate  to 
execute  their  will.  In  voting  for  him  for  a  second  term,  they  voted 
for  liberating  and  arming  the  slaves  of  the  South  to  crush  out  a 
slaveholders'  rebellion.  They  voted  that  the  Republic  shall  live, 
and  that  whatever  is  necessary  to  save  its  life  shall  be  clone.  They 
voted  that  slavery  shall  be  eternally  doomed,  and  future  rebellions 
thus  made  impossible.  They  voted,  not  that  Abraham  Lincoln 
can  save  the  country,  but  that  they  can  save  it,  with  him  as  their 
servant.  That  is  what  was  decided  in  the  late  elections.  I  have 
participated,  somewhat  actively,  in  seven  Presidential  contests,  and 


238  RADICALISM  AND   CONSERVATISM. 

I  remember  none  in  which  the  element  of  personal  enthusiasm  had 
a  smaller  share  than  that  of  last  November.  One  grand  and  over- 
mastering resolve  filled  the  hearts  and  swayed  the  purposes  of  the 
masses  everywhere,  and  that  was  the  rescue  of  the  country  through 
the  defeat  of  the  Chicago  Platform  and  conspirators.  In  the  exe- 
cution of  that  resolve  they  lost  sight  of  everything  else  ;  but  should 
the  President  now  place  himself  in  the  people's  way,  by  reviving 
the  old  policy  of  tenderness  to  the  rebels  and  their  beloved  institu- 
tion, the  loyal  men  of  the  country  will  abandon  his  policy  as  de- 
cidedly as  they  have  supported  it  generously.  They  have  not 
approved  the  mistakes  either  of  the  legislative  or  executive  depart- 
ment of  the  government.  They  expect  that  Congress  will  pass  a 
bill  for  the  confiscation  of  the  fee  of  rebel  landholders,  and  they 
expect  the  President  will  approve  it.  They  expect  that  Congress 
will  provide  for  the  reconstruction  of  the  rebel  States  by  sys- 
tematic legislation,  which  shall  guarantee  Republican  governments 
to  each  of  those  States  and  the  complete  enfranchisement  of  the 
negro  ;  and  they  will  not  approve,  as  they  have  not  approved,  of 
any  executive  interference  with  the  people's  will  as  deliberately 
expressed  by  Congress.  They  expect  that  Congress  will  provide 
for  parceling  out  the  forfeited  and  confiscated  lands  of  rebels  in 
small  homesteads  among  the  soldiers  and  seamen  of  the  war,  as 
a  fit  reward  for  their  valor,  and  a  security  against  the  ruinous 
monopoly  of  the  soil  in  the  South  ;  and  they  will  be  disappointed 
should  this  great  measure  fail  through  the  default  either  of  Con- 
gress or  the  Executive.  They  demand  a  system  of  just  retaliation 
against  the  rebels  for  outrages  committed  upon  our  prisoners  ;  that 
a  policy  of  increasing  earnestness  and  vigor  shall  prevail  till  the  war 
shall  be  ended  ;  and  that  no  hope  of  peace  shall  be  whispered  save 
on  condition  of  an  absolute  and  unconditional  surrender  to  our 
authority  ;  and  the  government  will  only  prolong  the  war  by  stand- 
ing in  the  way  of  these  demands.  This  is  emphatically  the  people's 
Avar  ;  and  it  will  not  any  longer  suffice  to  say  that  the  people  are 
not  ready  for  all  necessary  measures  of  success.  The  people  would 
have  been  ready  for  such  measures  from  the  beginning,  if  the  gov- 
ernment had  led  the  way.  At  every  stage  of  the  contest  they 
have  hailed  with  joy  every  earnest  man  who  came  forward,  and 
every  vigorous  war  measure  that  has  been  proposed.  So  long  as  the 
war  was  conducted  under  the  counsels  of  Conservatives,  and  in  the 
interests  of  slavery,  the  people  clamored  against  the  administration  ; 
but  just  so  soon  as  the  government  entered  upon  a  vigorous  policy, 
and  proclaimed  war  against  slavery,  the  people  began  to  shout  for 


RADICALISM  AND   CONSERVATISM.  239 

the  Union  and  liberty.  In  the  fall  of  1862,  before  the  administra- 
tion was  divorced  from  its  early  policy,  the  Union  party  was  over- 
whelmed at  the  polls.  But  we  triumphed  the  next  year,  and  glori- 
ously triumphed  last  year,  because  the  government  yielded  to  the 
popular  demand.  The  plea  often  urged,  that  the  people  were  not 
ready,  is  less  a  fact  than  a  pretext.  The  men  who  loved  slavery 
more  than  they  loved  the  Union  were  never  ready  for  radical 
measures.  They  are  not  ready  to-day.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
men  who  were  all  the  while  unconditionally  for  the  Union  would 
have  sustained  the  administration  far  more  heartily  in  the  most 
thorough  and  sweeping  war  measures,  than  they  sustained  its  policy 
of  delaying  those  measures  to  the  last  hour. 

The  truth  is,  the  people  have  stood  by  the  government  for  the 
sake  of  the  cause,  whether  its  policy  pleased  them  or  not.  Their 
faith  and  patience  have  been  singularly  unflinching  throughout  the 
entire  struggle.  They  would  not  distrust  the  President  without 
the  strongest  reasons.  They  were  ever  ready  to  credit  him  with 
good  intentions,  and  to  presume  in  favor  of  his  superior  means  of 
knowledge.  When  General  Fremont  was  recalled  from  Missouri, 
and  General  Butler  from  New  Orleans,  the  people  pocketed  their 
deep  disappointment,  and  quietly  acquiesced.  When  General 
Buell  was  kept  in  command  so  long  after  his  inefficiency  had  been 
demonstrated, and  his  loyalty  questioned,  both  by  the  country  and 
the  men  under  his  command,  the  people  bore  it  with  uncommon 
patience  and  long-suffering.  They  displayed  the  same  virtues  in 
the  case  of  General  McClellan  and  other  rebel  sympathizers,  who 
found  favor  with  the  administration  long  after  the  country  would 
have  sent  them  adrift.  Sir,  this  feeling  of  unconquerable  respect 
for  our  chosen  rulers,  this  Anglo-Saxon  regard  for  constituted 
authority,  has  been  evinced  by  the  people  through  all  the  phases 
of  the  war.  Most  assuredly  it  would  not  have  been  found  wanting 
had  the  government  inaugurated  a  radical  policy,  instead  of  a  con- 
servative one,  during  the  first  year  and  a  half  of  the  struggle.  The 
people  who  endured  McClellan,  and  Buell,  and  Halleck,  would 
have  endured  Fremont,  and  Hunter,  and  Butler.  If  the  Conserv- 
ative Unionists  of  Kentucky  were  not  ready  for  the  proclamation 
of  freedom  to  the  slaves  of  Missouri  rebels,  there  were  millions  of 
people  outside  of  Kentucky  who  were  not  ready  to  have  it  revoked. 
I  agree  that  slavery  had  done  much  to  drug  the  conscience  of  the 
country  with  its  insidious  poison.  I  know  that  we  had  so  long 
made  our  bed  with  slaveholders  that  kicking  them  out  was  rather 
an  awkward  business.     As  brethren,  living  under  a  common  gov- 


240  RADICALISM  AND   CONSERVATISM. 

ernment,  we  had  long  journeyed  together,  and  our  habits  and  tra- 
ditions naturally  took  the  form  of  obstacles  to  a  just  policy  in  deal- 
ing with  them  as  rebels  and  public  enemies.  It  was  byno  means 
easy  at  once  to  recognize  them  as  such.  All  this  is  granted,  and 
that  in  the  beginning  the  country  was  not  prepared  for  every  radical 
measure  of  legislation  and  war  now  being  employed  by  the  govern- 
ment. But  it  Avas  the  duty  of  the  administration  to  do  its  part  in 
preparing  the  country.  Clothed  with  solemn  official  authority,  and 
intrusted  by  the  nation  with  the  sworn  duty  of  serving  it  in  such  a 
crisis,  it  had  no  right  to  become  the  foot-ball  of  events.  It  had  no 
right,  at  such  a  time,  to  make  itself  a  negative  expression  or  an 
unknown  quantity,  in  the  algebra  which  was  to  work  out  the  grand 
problem.  It  had  no  right  to  take  shelter  beneath  a  debauched 
and  sickly  public  sentiment,  and  plead  it  in  bar  of  the  great  duty 
imposed  upon  it  by  the  crisis.  It  had  no  right,  certainly,  to  lag 
behind  that  sentiment,  to  magnify  its  extent  and  potency,  and  to 
become  its  virtual  ally,  instead  of  endeavoring  to  control  it,  and  to 
indoctrinate  the  country  witli  ideas  suited  to  the  emergency.  The 
power  of  the  government  in  moulding  the  general  opinion  and  feel- 
ing was  immense,  and  its  responsibility  must  be  measured  accord- 
ingly. The  revocation  of  the  first  anti-slavery  proclamation  of 
this  war  chilled  the  heart  of  every  earnest  loyalist  in  the  land,  and 
came  like  a  trumpet-call  to  the  pro-slavery  hosts  to  rally  and  stand 
together.  They  obeyed  it,  and  from  that  event  dates  the  birth  of 
organized  Copperhead  Democracy.  The  rebels  of  the  South  and 
their  sympathizers  in  the  North  felt  that  they  had  gained  an  ally 
in  the  President.  Had  he  sustained  that  measure,  would  not  its 
moral  effect  have  been  at  least  as  potent  on  the  other  side  ?  Had 
his  official  name  and  sanction  been  as  often  given  to  the  cause  of 
Radicalism  as  they  were  lent  to  that  of  pro-slavery  Conservatism, 
would  not  the  country  have  been  much  sooner  prepared  for  the 
saving  and  only  policy  ?  If  he  had  said,  early  in  the  struggle,  "  to 
all  whom  it  may  concern,"  what  he  says  now,  that  slavery  is  the 
nation's  enemy,  and  therefore  must  be  destroyed,  instead  of  shel- 
tering it  under  the  Constitution  and  sparing  it  from  the  hand  of 
war,  how  grandly  could  he  have  "  organized  victory,"  and  multi- 
plied himself  among  the  people  !  Sir,  our  traditionary  respect  for 
slavery  and  slaveholders  was  our  grand  peril.  It  stood  up  as  an 
impassable  barrier  in  the  way  of  any  successful  war  for  the  Union. 
So  long  as  it  was  allowed  to  dominate,  it  unnerved  the  arm  of  the 
government  and  deadened  the  spirit  of  the  people.  It  made  the 
Old  World  our  enemy,  and  threatened  us  with  foreign  war.     The 


EADICALISM  AND   CONSERVATISM.  241 

mission  of  the  government  was  not  to  make  this  feeling  stronger 
by  deferring  to  it,  or  to  doom  the  country  to  a  prolonged  war  and 
deplorable  sacrifices  as  the  best  means  of  teaching  the  people  the 
truth.  No.  The  country  needed  a  speedy  exodus  from  the  bond- 
age of  false  ideas,  and  the  government  should  have  pointed  the  way. 
A  frank  statement  by  it  of  the  real  issue  of  the  war,  without  any 
disposition  to  cover  up  the  truth ;  an  unmistakable  hostility  to 
slavery  as  the  organized  curse,  without  which  the  rebellion  would 
have  been  impossible  ;  and  the  timely  utterance  in  its  leading  State 
papers  of  a  few  bold  and  spirit-stirring  words  which  might  have 
been  "  half  battles,"  appealing  to  the  courage  and  manhood  of  the 
nation,  would  have  gone  far  to  educate  the  judgment  and  con- 
science of  the  people,  and  command  their  enthusiastic  espousal  of 
whatever  measures  would  promise  most  speedily  to  end  the  strug- 
gle and  economize  its  cost  in  property  and  life. 

Mr.  Chairman,  I  take  no  pleasure,  certainly,  in  thus  freely  dis- 
cussing the  policy  of  the  government  in  its  endeavors  to  meet  its 
great  responsibilities  during  this  war.  I  have  only  referred  to  its 
mistakes  as  a  servant  of  the  truth,  and  in  the  name  of  the  great 
cause  which  has  been  made  to  suffer.  I  believe,  religiously,  in  the 
freedom  of  speech.  From  the  beginning  of  the.  war  I  have  exer- 
cised the  right  of  frank,  friendly,  and  fearless  criticism  of  the  con- 
duct of  our  rulers,  wherever  I  believed  them  to  have  been  in  the 
wrong.  I  shall  continue  to  exercise  it  to  the  end  ;  and  if  I  should 
not,  through  any  personal  or  prudential  considerations,  I  would  be 
unworthy  of  the  seat  I  have  occupied  on  this  floor.  Criticism  has 
dictated  the  present  policy  of  the  government,  and  is  still  a  duty. 
This  great  battle  for  the  rights  of  man,  and  the  actors  in  it,  must 
be  judged.  None  of  them  can  "  escape  history."  The  fame  of 
none  of  them  is  so  precious  as  the  truth,  and  as  public  justice,  which 
cares  for  the  dead  as  well  as  the  living,  for  the  common  soldiers 
slain  by  thousands  as  well  as  for  the  general  and  the  statesman. 
The  President,  his  advisers,  his  commanding  generals,  and  the 
civilians  whose  shaping  hands  have  had  so  much  to  do  with  the 
conduct  of  the  war,  must  all  of  them  be  wreighed  in  the  balance 
by  the  people  and  the  generations  to  come.  "  The  great  soul  of 
the  world  is  just,"  and  sooner  or  later  all  disguises  will  be  thrown 
off,  and  every  historical  character  will  stand  forth  as  he  is,  in  the 
light  of  his  deeds  and  deserts.  The  men  who  have  been  intrusted 
with  the  concerns  of  the  nation  in  this  momentous  crisis  will  not 
be  judged  harshly.  Much  will  be  forgiven  or  excused  on  the 
score  of  the   surpassing  magnitude   and  difficulty  of  their  work. 

16 


242  .   RADICALISM    AND    CONSERVATISM. 

Justice  will  be  done  ;  but  that  justice  may  brand  as  a  crime  the 
blunders  proceeding  from  a  feeble,  timid,  ambidextrous  policy,  re- 
sulting in  great  sacrifices  of  life  and  treasure,  and  periling  the 
priceless  interests  at  stake.  I  would  award  all  due  honor  to  this 
administration,  and  to  the  statesmen  and  generals  who  have  been 
faithful  to  their  high  trusts  ;  but  I  would  award  an  equal  honor  to 
the  rank  and  file  of  the  people,  who  have  inspired  its  present 
policy,  and  to  the  rank  and  file  of  our  soldiers,  who  have  saved  the 
country  in  spite  of  the  mistakes  of  the  government,  the  strifes  of 
our  politicians,  and  the  rivalries  of  our  generals.  These  are  the 
real  heroes  of  the  war.  Untitled,  practically  unrewarded,  facing 
every  form  of  privation  and  danger,  and  animated  by  the  purest 
patriotism,  the  common  soldier  is  not  only  the  true  hero  of  the 
war,  but  the  real  savior  of  his  country. 

But  a  higher  honor,  if  not  a  more  enduring  fame,  will  be  the 
heritage  of  the  anti-slavery  pioneers  and  prophets  of  our  land  :  for 

"  Peace  hath  higher  tests  of  manhood 
Than  battle  ever  knew." 

Without  their  heroic  labors  and  sacrifices  the  Republic,  "  heir 
of  all  the  ages,"  would  have  been  the  mightiest  slave  empire  of  the 
world.  In  an  age  of  practical  atheism  and  mammon-worship,  when 
the  Church  and  the  State  joined  hands  with  Slavery  as  the  new 
trinity  of  the  nation's  faith,  they  really  believed  in  God,  in  justice, 
in  the  resistless  might  of  the  truth.  They  believed  that  liberty  is 
the  birthright  of  all  men,  and  their  grand  mission  was  the  practical 
vindication  of  this  truth.  They  believed,  with  their  whole  hearts, 
in  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  They  accepted  its  teachings 
as  coincident  with  the  Gospel  of  .Christ,  and  supported  by  reason 
and  justice.  It  was  their  ceaseless  "  battle-cry  of  freedom,"  and 
they  chanted  it  as  "  the  fresh,  the  matin  song  of  the  universe,"  to 
the  enslaved  of  all  races  and  lands.  They  were  branded  as 
fanatics  and  infidels,  and  encountered  everywhere  the  hootings  of 
the  multitude  and  the  scorn  of  politicians  and  priests ;  but  I  know 
of  no  class  of  men  who  were  ever  more  far-sighted,  whose  con- 
victions rested  on  so  broad  a  basis  of  Christian  morals  and  logic, 
and  whose  religious  trust  was  so  strong  and  so  steadfast.  For 
them  there  was  no  "  eclipse  of  faith."  Just  as  the  nation  began 
to  lapse  from  the  grand  ideas  of  our  revolutionary  era,  they  began 
to  "  cry  aloud  and  spare  not,"  and  they  never  ceased  or  slackened 
their  labors.  Placing  their  ears  to  the  ground  in  the  infancy  and 
weakness  of  their  movement,  they  caught  the  rumbling  thunders 


RADICALISM   AND   CONSERVATISM.  243 

of  civil  war  in  the  distance,  warned  the  country  of  its  danger,  and 
preached  repentance  as  the  chosen  and  only  means  of  escape. 
They  were  compelled  to  face  mobs,  violence,  persecution,  and 
death,  and  were  always  misunderstood  or  misrepresented  ;  but  they 
never  faltered.  Reputation,  honors,  property,  worldly  ease,  were 
all  freely  laid  upon  the  altar  of  duty,  in  their  resolve  to  vindicate 
the  rights  of  man  and  the  freedom  of  speech.  To  follow  these 
apostles  and  martyrs  was  to  forsake  all  the  prizes  of  life  which 
worldly  prudence  or  ambition  could  value  or  covet.  It  was  to 
take  up  the  heaviest  cross  yet  fashioned  by  this  century  as  the  test 
of  Christian  character  and  heroism  ;  and  those  who  bore  it  were 
far  braver  spirits  than  the  men  who  fight  our  battles  on  land  and 
sea. 

Mr.  Chairman,  the  failure  of  men  thus  devoted  to  a  great  and 
holy  cause  was  morally  impossible.  They  could  not  fail.  Through 
their  courage,  constancy,  and  faith,  they  gradually  secured  the 
cooperation  or  sympathy  of  the  better  type  of  men  of  all  parties 
and  creeds.  They  seriously  disturbed,  or  broke  in  pieces,  the 
great  political  and  ecclesiastical  organizations  of  the  land ;  and 
even  before  this  war  their  ideas  were  rapidly  taking  captive  the 
popular  heart.  When  it  came,  they  saw,  as  by  intuition,  the 
character  of  the  struggle,  as  the  final  phase  of  slaveholding  mad- 
ness and  crime,  and  insisted  upon  the  early  adoption  of  that  radical 
policy  which  the  government  at  last  was  compelled  to  accept.  I 
believe  it  safe  to  say  that  the  moral  appeals  and  persistent  criticism 
of  these  men,  and  of  the  far  greater  numbers  who  borrowed  or 
sympathized  with  their  views,  saved  our  cause  from  the  complete 
control  of  Conservatism,  and  thus  saved  the  country  itself  from 
destruction.  Going  at  once  to  the  heart  of  our  great  conflict,  they 
pointed  out  the  only  remedy,  and  felt  compelled  to  reprobate  the 
failure  of  the  government  to  adopt  it.  They  judged  its  policy  in 
war,  as  they  had  done  in  peace,  in  the  light  of  its  fidelity  or  infi- 
delity to  Human  Rights.  By  this  test  they  tried  every  man  and 
party,  and  they  need  ask  for  no  other  rule  of  judgment  for  them- 
selves. The  administration,  and  the  chief  actors  in  this  drama  of 
war,  of  whatever  political  school,  must  be  weighed  in  the  same 
great  balance.  Not  even  the  founders  of  the  Republic  will  be 
spared  from  the  trial.  In  their  compromise  with  slavery  in  the 
beginning,  which  is  now  seen  to  have  been  the  germ  of  this  horrid 
conflict,  they  "  swerved  from  the  right."  Posterity  must  so  pro- 
nounce ;  and  the  record  which  dims  the  lustre  of  their  great  names 
will   be    read   in  the  flames  of  this  war  as  a  warnino;  against  all 


244  RADICALISM   AND   CONSERVATISM. 

♦ 
future  compacts  with  evil.  Justice  to  public  men  is  as  certain  as 
that  truth  is  omnipotent.  It  may  be  delayed  for  a  season  ;  it  may 
be  hidden  from  the  vision  of  men  of  little  faith  ;  but  its  final  tri- 
umph is  sure.  To  the  world's  true  heroes  and  confessors  history 
ever  sends  its  word  of  cheer  :  — 

"  The  good  can  well  afford  to  wait; 

Give  ermined  knaves  their  hour  of  crime ; 
Ye  have  the  future,  grand  and  great,  — 
The  safe  appeal  of  truth  to  time." 


SALE   OF   MINERAL  LANDS. 

HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES,  FEBRUARY  9,  1865. 

[The  policy  of  vesting  the  fee  of  mineral  lands  in  the  miners,  and  thus  promoting 
security  of  titles,  permanent  settlements,  and  thorough  development,  is  believed  to 
be  here  conclusively  sustained.  Unfortunately  for  the  best  interests  of  the  country, 
and  owing  chiefly  to  opposition  from  the  State  of  California,  it  has  only  been  par- 
tially carried  out,  and  by  very  cumbersome  and  impracticable  methods.  The  whole 
subject  is  more  fully  discussed  by  Mr.  Julian  in  an  elaborate  report  from  the  House 
Committee  on  Public  Lands  during  the  first  session  of  the  Thirty-ninth  Congress.] 

Mr.  Speaker,  —  The  policy  of  the  government  in  dealing  with 
the  vast  mineral  resources  of  the  nation  is  a  subject  of  the  highest 
moment  to  the  people,  and  invokes  the  early  and  earnest  attention 
of  Congress.  No  one  can  overstate  its  magnitude,  considered  in 
relation  to  the  actual  facts  of  our  condition  to-day.  In  seasons  of 
prosperity  and  peace  our  country  can  endure  much  mal-adminis- 
tration,  and  very  serious  financial  mistakes  ;  but  these  are  not  to 
be  hazarded  in  this  crisis  of  our  history.  We  are  compassed  about 
with  perils  and  pressing  necessities,  and  must  husband  both  our 
wisdom  and  our  resources  if  we  hope  to  save  the  Republic. 

The  measure  I  have  had  the  honor  to  report  from  the  Com- 
mittee on  Public  Lands  proposes  a  radical  and  entire  change  in 
the  present  policy  of  the  government  respecting  its  lands  contain- 
ing the  precious  metals.  It  provides  for  vesting  the  fee  in  indi- 
vidual proprietors  by  public  and  private  sale,  instead  of  retaining 
the  title  in  the  government  and  treating  their  occupants  as  tenants 
at  will.  It  contemplates  their  survey  and  subdivision  into  small 
tracts,  and  fixes  a  minimum  price  upon  them,  graded  according  to 
size,  locality,  and  mineral  value.  It  prohibits  combinations  among 
bidders  at  the  public  sales,  and  the  purchase  of  any  lands  by 
foreigners,  except  those  who  shall  have  declared  their  intention  to 
become  citizens.  It  provides  that  actual  discoverers  and  workers 
of  mining  localities  shall  have  the  right  to  purchase  them  at  the 
minimum  price,  and  thus  relieve  themselves  from  the  disadvan- 
tage of  competing  with  rich  capitalists.  It  limits  the  quantity  of 
mineral  land,  which  any  single  purchaser  may  buy,  to  forty  acres. 
It  requires  that  the  gold  and  silver  extracted  shall  be  coined  in  the 


246  SALE    OF   MINERAL   LANDS. 

mints  of  the  United  States,  empowers  the  President  to  lay  off  the 
mining  regions  into  suitable  coining  districts,  and  compels  miners 
to  have  their  gold  and  silver  coined  in  the  districts  in  which  they 
are  found.  It  further  provides  that  every  purchaser  shall  first 
take  the  oath  of  loyalty  to  the  United  States  prescribed  by  law, 
and  that  the  net  proceeds  of  the  sales  of  these  lands  shall  be  dedi- 
cated and  applied  to  the  payment  of  the  principal  and  interest  of 
the  bonds  of  the  United  States.  This  is  a  brief  outline  of  the 
main  features  of  the  bill ;  and  I  propose,  in  entering  upon  its  dis- 
cussion, to  refer  to  some  preliminary  considerations  which  fairly 
open  the  way. 

That  the  present  condition  of  our  currency  is  an  unsound  one, 
is  a  proposition  which  no  man  will  dispute.  That  the  only  safe 
basis  for  a  financial  medium  of  exchange  is  coin,  may  be  affirmed 
as  equally  true.  It  is  needless  to  deny  this  fact  or  dispute  about 
its  philosophy.  The  civilized  world  has  so  adjudged.  The  ques- 
tion may  fairly  be  accepted  as  a  settled  one,  that  gold  and  silver 
constitute  the  true  medium  of  exchange,  and  the  permanent 
standard  of  value.  No  financial  policy  therefore  can  be  trusted 
which  does  not  contemplate  a  return  to  specie  payment  as  soon  as 
practicable.  This  is  the  opinion  of  Mr.  McCulloch,  the  able 
Comptroller  of  our  national  banks.  He  says,  "  It  should  be  the 
object  of  all  honorable  bankers  to  expedite,  as  far  as  possible, 
rather  than  to  postpone,  a  return  to  specie  payments,"  and  that 
"  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  the  business  of  the  country  rests 
upon  an  unsound  basis,  or  rather  is  without  a  proper  basis,  as  long 
as  the  government  and  the  banks  are  not  meeting  their  obligations 
in  coin."  Our  government  securities  may  be  very  current  to-day, 
because  they  are  sustained  by  popular  confidence  and  the  tide  of 
fortune  which  seems  to  be  sweeping  away  all  obstacles  to  the  tri- 
umph of  the  national  cause.  But  this  confidence  may  not  be 
abiding.  What  we  most  of  all  need  is  such  a  policy  as  will  sustain 
popular  confidence,  even  under  military  failures  and  a  prolonged 
war ;  and  such  a  policy  must  embody  the  fundamental  principle 
just  stated. 

But  to  this  end,  Mr.  Speaker,  the  quantity  of  the  precious 
metals  must  be  increased.  The  startling  disproportion  of  gold  and 
silver  to  other  values,  and  to  our  commercial  wants,  must  in  some 
way  be  destroyed  or  greatly  reduced.  The  property  of  the  United 
States  within  the  last  ten  years  has  increased  about  nine  hundred 
million  dollars  per  year.  This  increase  is  estimated  to  be  more 
than  two  hundred  times  greater  than  the   increase  of  coin  during 


SALE   OF  MINERAL  LANDS.  247 

the  same  period.  These  are  very  suggestive  and  significant  facts. 
The  growth  of  our  commerce  and  the  issue  of  paper  money  and 
government  securities  still  further  complicate  our  financial  condi- 
tion, and  demand,  as  an  absolute  necessity,  an  increase  of  the 
quantity  of  gold  and  silver.  If  this  is  not  provided  for,  the  price 
of  coin  will  continue  to  advance,  and  by  its  effect  upon  govern- 
ment stocks  and  prices  generally  must  seriously  cripple  the  prose- 
cution of  the  war,  and  most  injuriously  affect  the  welfare  of  the 
whole  country.  Here  is  the  real  problem  of  our  finances,  if  not 
also  a  problem  involving  the  national  life.  That  we  are  to  crush 
the  rebellion,  and  that  speedily,  few  men  can  any  longer  doubt. 
Every  passing  day  is  demonstrating  that  our  military  power  is 
amply  adequate  to  the  task  it  has  in  hand.  Of  the  questions 
growing  out  of  the  war  which  yet  remain  to  be  settled,  the  grand 
one,  and  by  far  the  most  difficult  of  solution,  is  that  of  our  finances. 
How  can  the  further  inflation  of  the  currency  be  prevented,  and  a 
return  to  specie  payments  become  possible,  without  increasing  the 
quantity  of  specie  ?  Even  should  the  war  be  ended  within  the 
present  year,  and  permanent  peace  be  restored,  the  question  I  am 
presenting  must  continue  a  vital  one,  demanding  the  early  and 
most  earnest  consideration  of  statesmen. 

Perhaps  it  will  be  said  that  increased  taxation  can  meet  the 
financial  difficulty.  I  agree  that  it  may  partially  do  so.  If  Con- 
gress, in  the  early  stages  of  the  war,  had  known  how  to  tax,  and 
had  possessed  the  courage  to  impose  such  burdens  upon  the  people 
as  the  national  exigency  demanded,  our  financial  condition  would 
have  been  incalculably  better  than  we  now  find  it.  The  price  of 
gold  would  not  have  gone  up  as  we  have  seen  it.  The  great  mass 
of  the  people,  who  are  interested  in  stable  and  moderate  prices, 
would  not  have  been  compelled  to  buy  the  necessaries  of  life  at 
the  enormous  and  ruinous  rates  which  have  resulted  from  the 
inflation  of  the  currency,  unaccompanied  by  courageous  efforts  in 
the  way  of  taxation  to  defray  the  expenses  of  the  war  as  it  pro- 
gressed. The  government,  in  the  purchase  of  its  vast  supplies  for 
our  grand  armies,  would  have  been  able  to  do  so  at  such  reasona- 
ble rates  as  to  have  saved  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars,  thus  hus- 
banding our  resources,  maintaining  the  national  credit,  and  insur- 
ing the  confidence  of  the  people.  A  system  of  vigorous  taxation, 
inaugurated  early  in  the  year  1862,  before  the  derangement  of  the 
currency  was  made  manifest,  and  steadily  maintained  since  that 
time,  would  have  saved  to  the  country  more  than  a  million  dollars 
per  day,  thus  averting  the  frightful  national  debt  which  has  accu- 


248  SALE   OF  MINERAL   LANDS. 

mulated,  and  is  rapidly  increasing  through  the   failure  of  timely 
and  adequate  taxation. 

But  these  legislative  mistakes  cannot  be  undone.  We  are  com- 
pelled to  deal  with  the  present  as  the  past  has  made  it.  Congress, 
within  the  last  three  years,  has  been  learning  the  science  of  taxa- 
tion. Our  burdens,  while  they  are  by  no  means  crushing,  are 
heavy.  Undoubtedly  we  shall  be  compelled  to  increase  them  in 
any  event  of  the  future ;  but  no  rate  of  taxation  which  any  public 
man  will  dare  propose,  or  which  the  people  would  endure,  will 
help  the  country  out  of  its  financial  crisis.  Some  policy  which 
will  secure  to  the  government  a  fresh  and  liberal  supply  of  the 
precious  metals  will  be  found  absolutely  necessary.  If,  therefore, 
there  is  anywhere  an  available  source  of  revenue  yet  untouched. 
by  which  the  burdens  of  the  people  may  be  greatly  relieved,  and 
the  nation  itself  rescued  from  the  great  financial  maelstrom  which 
threatens  to  swallow  it  up,  it  becomes  our  chosen  and  highest 
duty  to  seek  that  source  of  revenue,  and  coin  it  into  the  national 
service.  Sir,  I  believe  it  requires  no  divining-rod  to  find  it,  and 
that  all  we  need,  in  the  words  of  Mr.  Ruggles,  is  to  "  uncover  the 
mountains  of  gold  and  silver,  garnered  up  by  Providence  to  meet 
the  cost  of  saving  our  nation's  life." 

The  auriferous  regions  of  the  United  States  on  the  western  por- 
tion of  the  Continent  extend  from  thirty-one  degrees  and  thirty 
minutes  north  latitude  to  the  forty-ninth  parallel,  and  from  one 
hundred  degrees  of  longitude  to  the  Pacific,  embracing  portions  of 
Dakota,  Nebraska,  Colorado,  New  Mexico,  Arizona,  Utah,  Nevada, 
California,  Oregon,  Washington,  Idaho,  and  Montana,  and  cover- 
ing an  area  of  more  than  a  million  square  miles.  These  vast 
regions  are  described  in  official  reports  as  stretching  longitudinally 
and  in  lateral  spurs,  crossed  and  linked  together  by  intervening 
ridges,  connecting  the  whole  system  by  five  principal  ranges  which 
divide  the  country  into  an  equal  number  of  basins,  each  being 
nearly  surrounded  by  mountains  and  watered  by  mountain  streams 
and  snows;  thereby  interspersing  this  immense  territory  with  bodies 
of  agricultural  lands  equal  to  the  support,  not  only  of  miners,  but 
of  a  dense  population.  These  mountains  are  literally  stocked  with 
minerals,  gold  and  silver  being  interspersed  in  profusion  over  this 
immense  surface,  and  daily  brought  to  light  by  new  discoveries. 

According  to  the  Commissioner  of  the  General  Land  Office,  a 
greater  amount  of  mineral  wealth  is  to  be  found  in  the  territory  of 
the  United  States  than  in  all  other  habitable  countries.  Before 
the  discovery  of  the  precious  metals  in  California  the  annual  pro- 


SALE    OF  MINERAL  LANDS.  249 

duction  of  gold  in  all  parts  of  the  world  did  not  exceed  an  average 
of  eighteen  million  dollars.  The  present  annual  production  in 
California  alone  is  estimated  at  seventy  million  dollars.  The 
Commissioner  of  the  General  Land  Office,  in  his  report  for  1862, 
estimated  the  production  of  gold  in  that  year,  in  California  and  the 
other  western  gold-bearing  regions,  at  one  hundred  million  dollars; 
and  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior,  in  his  report  of  the  same  year, 
estimated  that  if  an  amount  of  labor  relatively  equal  to  that  ex- 
pended in  California  had  been  applied  to  the  gold  fields  known  to 
exist  outside  of  that  State,  the  production,  including  that  of  Cal- 
ifornia, would  have  exceeded  four  hundred  million  dollars.  Tak- 
ing into  account  subsequent  and  quite  recent  discoveries  in  our 
mining  regions,  and  especially  in  Arizona,  I  think  it  safe  to  say 
that  an  annual  product  of  a  thousand  million  dollars  might  be 
realized  under  a  just  policy,  which  would  at  once  invite  laborers 
to  our  Western  Territories  and  reward  them  by  rich  returns.  I 
quote  the  following  facts  from  the  official  report  just  referred  to  :  — 

"  The  usual  size  of  a  mining  claim  in  the  quartz  region  is  one  hundred  feet 
on  the  line  of  the  lode  or  vein,  and  one  hundred  feet  on  each  side,  equal  to  an 
area  of  twenty  thousand  square  feet,  or  say  twelve  hundred  claims  to  the 
square  mile.  Allow  that  only  one  hundredth  part  of  the  mountain  surface  is 
occupied  by  paying  leads  or  veins,  and  there  will  be  space  for  three  million 
six  hundred  thousand  claims.  But  Governor  Evans,  of  Colorado,  estimates 
the  already  discovered  gold-bearing  region  of  that  Territory  as  affording  ample 
room  for  eight  hundred  thousand  claims,  and  states  that  new  discoveries  are 
daily  increasing  with  area.  A  glance  at  the  map  is  sufficient  to  show  that  the 
mineral  region  of  Colorado  occupies  less  than  one  sixth  of  the  whole  extent 
under  consideration  ;  but  assume  it  to  be  one  sixth,  and  there  will  be  ample 
extent  on  this  basis  for  four  million  eight  hundred  thousand  claims,  which,  if 
worked,  would  give  employment  to  twenty  million  men." 

These  pregnant  facts,  Mr.  Speaker,  are  supplied  by  the  govern- 
ment itself;  and  yet  weighed  down  with  debt,  and  threatened  with 
bankruptcy  and  ruin  through  the  scarcity  of  gold  and  silver,  it  has 
adopted  no  policy  whatever  in  dealing  with  our  mineral  lands,  save 
the  negative  one  of  reserving  them  from  sale.  The  United  States 
have  left  them  open  to  our  people  and  to  the  greed  of  monopolists 
from  foreign  countries  for  the  past  sixteen  years,  during  which  a 
thousand  million  dollars  have  been  extracted,  without  a  dollar  of 
revenue  to  the  national  treasury.  Sir,  this  is  financial  profligacy. 
It  is  legislative  madness.  If  not  repented  of,  and  that  speedily, 
it  may  end  in  national  suicide.  Our  system  of  taxation  reaches 
everywhere,  drawing  revenue  from  all  quarters,  except  these 
prime  sources  of  supply.     They  are  exempt,  while  every  other  in- 


250  SALE    OF  MINERAL   LANDS. 

terest  is  made  to  groan  under  the  pressure  ;  and  yet  the  govern- 
ment, slumbering  over  its  grand  opportunity,  declines  to  adopt  any 
policy  respecting  them.  It  does  not  sell  its  mineral  lands  ;  it  does 
not  lease  them  ;  it  simply  abandons  them,  while  owning  them  in 
fee,  and  solemnly  bound,  as  the  trustee  of  the  people,  and  by  the 
Constitution  itself,  to  "make  all  needful  rules  and  regulations"  for 
their  government  and  the  development  of  their  wealth.  How  long 
will  the  people  thus  sport  with  their  resources,  and  bear  with  their 
public  servants  who  are  thus  recreant  to  the  public  good  ? 

But  assuming  that  this  "  let-alone  "  policy  is  to  be  abandoned  by 
the  government,  the  important  question  remains  as  to  the  disposi- 
tion of  these  mineral  lands.  As  a  saving  financial  expedient  and 
a  wise  national  policy,  what  shall  be  done  with  them  ?  This  be- 
comes an  immediate,  practical  question.  Three  several  methods 
of  solving  it  have  been  advocated,  namely,  the  system  of  leasing, 
the  imposition  of  a  tax  upon  the  mining  products,  and  the  absolute 
sale  of  the  fee.  The  two  methods  first  named  rest  upon  substan- 
tially the  same  principle.  They  both  recognize  the  United  States 
as  the  perpetual  landlord  of  these  vast  possessions,  and  the  people 
who  enter  upon  them  as  tenants,  either  for  years  or  at  will.  They 
are  both  at  war  with  our  republican  institutions.  They  are  both 
in  direct  antagonism  with  the  policy  of  sale,  which  would  utterly 
divest  the  title  of  the  government,  and  vest  it  in  individual  pro- 
prietors. It  is  this  latter  policy  which  is  submitted  in  the  bill  I 
have  reported,  and  which  I  propose  briefly  to  argue. 

The  Ordinance  of  1785,  for  the  disposal  of  the  lands  in  the 
"  "Western  Territory,"  contained  the  first  reservation  of  mineral 
land  from  sale.  Some  fifteen  years  later,  authority  of  law  was 
given  for  leasing  such  lands.  The  folly  of  our  rulers  at  one  time 
went  so  far  as  to  provide  by  law  for  leasing  agricultural  lands,  and 
I  mention  this  to  show  how  unsafe  it  is  to  make  the  past  action  of 
our  government  the  guide  of  our  steps  to-day.  In  1807  the  power 
to  lease  was  confined  to  lead  mines.  In  the  Canadian  Bounty 
Land  Act  of  1816  lead  mines  and  salt  springs  were  excluded  from 
location.  Congress,  however,  by  Act  of  March  3,  1829,  conferred 
authority  on  the  President  to  expose  to  sale  as  other  public  lands 
"  the  several  lead  mines  and  contiguous  lands  in  the  State  of  Mis- 
souri," under  certain  specified  restrictions  ;  but  with  this  excep- 
tion the  policy  of  reserving  mineral  lands  from  sale,  and  of  leasing 
lead  and  copper  mines,  continued  till  the  year  1846,  when  Con- 
gress, on  the  llth  day  of  July,  ordered  "  the  reserved  lead  mines 
and  contiguous  lands  in  the   States  of  Illinois  and  Arkansas,"  and 


SALE    OF  MINERAL   LANDS.  251 

the  then  "  Territories  of  Wisconsin  and  Iowa,"  to  he  exposed  to 
sale  under  certain  conditions,  the  price  being  not  less  than  two  dol- 
lars and  a  half  per  acre.  In  the  following  year  Congress  ordered 
the  organization  of  the  Lake  Superior  district  in  the  upper  penin- 
sula of  Michigan,  and  the  Chippewa  land  district  in  Wisconsin, 
and  provided  for  the  sale  of  lands  containing  copper,  lead,  or  other 
valuable  ores,  at  a  minimum  price  of  five  dollars  per  acre. 

These  acts  of  Congress  show  how  long  and  patiently  the  gov- 
ernment acted  the  part  of  National  landlord  over  its  National 
tenants,  the  miners  of  the  Northwest.  And  the  experiment  failed 
utterly.  The  leasing  policy  drew  into  the  mining  regions  a  popu- 
lation of  vagrants,  gamblers,  and  ruffians,  excluding  sober  and  in- 
telligent citizens,  and  making  the  establishment  of  organized  civil 
communities  impossible.  Their  houses  were  mere  hovels  and 
shanties.  They  resisted  the  payment  of  taxes  on  the  products  of 
the  mines,  and  killed  the  agents  of  the  government.  The  settle- 
ment and  civilization  of  these  mining  regions  was  not  only  thus 
prevented,  but  neither  the  national  treasury  nor  the  miner  was  the 
pecuniary  gainer  under  this  policy.  The  government  at  length 
was  forced  to  adopt  the  policy  of  selling  the  fee,  when  a  new  class 
of  men  took  possession  of  these  regions  as  the  owners  of  the  soil, 
brought  their  families  with  them,  laid  the  foundations  of  social 
order,  expelled  the  barbarians  who  had  secured  a  temporary  occu- 
pancy, and  thus  at  once  promoted  their  own  welfare,  the  real  pros- 
perity of  the  country,  and  the  financial  interest  of  the  government. 

Mr.  Speaker,  this  signal  and  very  instructive  failure  of  the  leas- 
ing policy  in  the  mines  of  Illinois,  was  preceded  by  a  similar  one 
in  the  lead  mines  of  Missouri.  The  government,  as  already  stated, 
adopted  the  policy  in  1807,  and  tried  it  for  more  than  twenty 
years  in  that  State.  Many  leases  were  taken,  and  great  quantities 
of  lead  were  dug  from  the  mines,  but  no  rents  were  paid  to  the 
government, —  "  No,  not  a  dollar,  not  one  cent."  I  quote  the 
words  of  Colonel  Benton  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  in 
the  year  1823,  after  the  experiment  had  been  tried  in  his  State  fif- 
teen years  ;  and  I  fortify  my  argument  by  his  high  authority.  I 
shall  bring  to  my  aid  both  his  facts  and  his  reasoning  in  discussing 
the  measure  I  have  submitted.  "  The  spirit  of  tenancy,"  said  he, 
"  is  everywhere  the  same  ;  it  is  a  spirit  adverse  to  improvements, 
always  leaning  toward  the  injury  of  the  property  in  possession,  and 
always  holding  back  from  the  payment  of  rent."  The  truth  of 
this  principle  will  be  universally  admitted,  and  as  an  argument 
against  the  policy  in  question  is  unanswerable,  and  in  itself  suffi- 


252  SALE    OF  MINERAL   LANDS. 

cient  to  demand  a  totally  different  system.  Every  landlord  and 
tenant,  whether  of  mineral  or  agricultural  lands,  must  admit  its 
force. 

Colonel  Benton  declared  that  the  fruit  of  this  false  system  has 
been  "  injury  to  the  national  prosperity,  loss  to  the  national  treas- 
ury, and  a  resource  to  foreign  powers,  to  supply  us  with  the  arti- 
cles of  which  God  in  his  providence  has  given  to  us  more  than  He 
has  given  to  them."  He  argued  that  to  continue  this  system 
would  be  "  to  perpetuate  the  relation  of  landlord  and  tenant 
throughout  the  vast  extent  of  the  mineral  districts  of  the  Repub- 
lic, that  landlord  being  the  Federal  Government,  and  holding  its 
domains  and  a  body  of  tenantry  within  the  limits  of  a  sovereign 
State."  He  denied  such  a  power  to  the  Federal  Government.  "I 
take  my  stand,"  said  he,  "upon  the  words  of  the  Constitution,  and 
deny  to  the  Federal  Government  a  power  to  hold  lands  in  any 
State,  except  upon  grants  made,  in  cases  enumerated,  and  for  the 
purposes  specified  in  the  Constitution.  The  monarchies  of  Europe 
have  their  serfs  and  vassals,  but  the  genius  of  the  Republic  dis- 
claims the  tenure  and  the  spirit  of  vassalage,  and  calls  for  freemen, 
owners  of  the  soil,  masters  of  their  own  castles,  and  free  from  the 
influence  of  a  foreign  sovereign."  The  effects  of  this  policy,  he 
said,  would  be  "  population  retarded,  the  improvement  of  the  coun- 
try delayed,  large  bodies  of  land  held  free  of  taxation,  and  their 
elections  more  or  less  influenced  by  the  presence  of  men  holding 
their  leases  at  the  will  of  the  Federal  Government."  He  would 
"  deliver  up  the  mines  and  salines  of  the  Republic  to  the  pursuit 
of  individual  industry,  to  the  activity  of  individual  enterprise,  to 
the  care  of  individual  interest,  guided  and  sustained  by  the  skill 
and  capital  of  those  who  may  choose  to  hold  them." 

He  argued  that  the  government  would  "  find  its  indemnity  in 
the  price  which  would  be  paid  for  them,  and  in  the  increased 
wealth  of  its  citizens,  which  is  in  fact  the  wealth  of  the  gov- 
ernment itself.  Besides,  without  a  freehold  in  the  soil,  the  ex- 
perience of  all  countries  proves  that  the  riches  of  the  mineral 
kingdom  can  never  be  discovered  or  brought  into  action.  A 
lessee  for  years  cannot  incur  the  expense  of  sinking  shafts,  con- 
necting them  by  galleries,  opening  ventilators,  constructing  hydrau- 
lic machines,  and  building  permanent  furnaces.  And  without 
these  labors  the  mineral  riches  which  lie  some  hundred  feet  in 
the  bowels  of  earth  can  never  be  discovered.  All  this  is  now 
proved  on  the  mineral  lands  of  the  United  States  in  Missouri. 
Fifty  or  sixty  mines  have  been  opened,  exhausted,  and  abandoned. 


SALE   OF   MINERAL  LAXDS.  253 

Yes,  in  the  space  of  a  few  months  a  mine  is  exhausted,  while  in 
England  mines  are  now  worked  which  were  opened  two  thousand 
years  ago.  The  reason  is  obvious  :  the  English  miner  having  the 
freehold  of  the  soil,  husbands  and  improves  his  property,  and  fol- 
lows the  vein  downward  even  to  the  distance  of  two  thousand  feet. 
The  American  lessee  can  only  take  what  he  finds  near  the  surface 
of  the  ground.  He  cannot  pierce  the  rock  in  pursuit  of  the  de- 
scending veins  which  lead  to  the  great  beds  of  ore  below.  He 
can  only  pick  out  the  eyes  of  the  mine,  without  touching  its  body  ; 
nor  is  it  possible  to  tell  where  nature  has  deposited  her  hidden 
treasures,  except  by  opening  the  earth  to  the  places  where  they 
lie." 

In  concluding  his  speech,  embodying  so  much  both  of  argument 
and  fact,  and  so  forcibly  expressed,  Colonel  Benton  further  referred 
to  the  example  of  England  :  — 

"  In  the  early  ages  her  base  metals  were  considered  as  too  precious  for  the 
people,  and  were  reserved  as  Crown  property.  Her  mines  were  leased  out, 
and  the  great  tin  mines  of  Cornwall  brought  the  imposing  sum  of  one  hundred 
marks  per  annum,  and  the  rest  in  proportion.  In  the  reign  of  Philip  and  Mary 
this  policy  was  changed.  The  mineral  kingdom,  by  an  act  of  Parliament, 
ceased  to  be  a  monopoly  in  the  hands  of  the  Crown.  It  was  delivered  up  to 
the  skill  and  capital  and  industry  of  individuals,  and  the  result  has  been 
that  the  iron,  lead,  copper,  tin,  coal,  and  salt  of  England  have  carried  the 
wealth  and  power  of  the  British  empire  to  a  height  to  -which  the  mines  of 
Peru  and  Mexico  could  never  have  exalted  her.  Let  us  follow  her  example, — 
not  the  example  of  her  dark  ages,  but  of  that  enlightened  period  which  has 
made  of  a  small  island  in  the  sea  one  of  the  richest  and  most  powerful  empires 
on  the  face  of  the  globe." 

These,  Mr.  Speaker,  are  some  of  the  arguments  of  the  great 
statesman  of  Missouri,  as  embodied  in  a  speech  delivered  in  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States  forty-two  years  ago.  They  did  not 
fail  of  their  purpose ;  for,  though  not  heeded  at  the  time,  they  at 
length  found  their  vindication  in  the  Act  of  Congress  of  1829, 
already  referred  to,  abolishing  the  system  of  tenancy  in  Missouri, 
and  subjecting  her  mineral  lands  to  sale  ;  and  still  further  in  the 
Acts  of  1846  and  1847,  inaugurating  the  same  reform  in  the  lead 
and  copper  regions  of  Illinois,  Michigan,  and  Wisconsin.  To  the 
extent  of  this  legislation  the  reasoning  of  Colonel  Benton  has  pre- 
vailed in  the  policy  of  the  government,  and  has  been  fully  justified 
bv  time.  If  it  be  said  that  the  policy  of  selling  the  fee  of  lands 
containing  other  minerals  than  those  mentioned  has  not  been  tried, 
I  reply  that  for  that  very  reason  there  is  no  fact  which  can  be 
adduced  against  it ;  and  I  reply  further,  that  the  arguments  I  have 


254  SALE   OF  MINERAL   LANDS. 

employed,  showing  the  principle  of  tenancy  to  be  a  vicious  one, 
apply  as  legitimately  to  lands  containing  gold  and  silver  as  to  those 
containing  copper  and  lead  ;  to  our  great  Western  Territories  as 
well  as  to  regions  far  less  remote.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is 
one  unbroken  chain  of  testimony  against  the  policy  of  retaining 
the  fee  of  mineral  lands  in  the  government,  and  dealing  with  their 
occupants  as  tenants,  and  this  testimony  must  be  accepted  whether 
the  lands  contain  the  precious  or  the  useful  metals,  and  whether 
they  lie  on  this  or  the  other  side  of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  On  this 
point  fact  and  argument  join  hands,  and  leave  that  policy  totally 
unsupported. 

Mr.  Speaker,  the  sale  of  our  mineral  lands  is  demanded  by  con- 
siderations which  appeal,  with  irresistible  force,  to  the  common 
sense  of  every  man  who  will  allow  himself  to  think.  In  the  first 
place,  it  will  give  security  to  land  titles,  and  thus  necessarily  invite 
into  the  mining  regions  a  population  of  permanent  settlers,  and 
sober,  intelligent,  wealth-producing  people.  This  has  been  shown 
in  the  case  to  which  I  have  already  referred  of  the  lead  mines  of 
Illinois.  It  must  be  remembered  that  population  is  not  always 
wealth.  It  should  be  permanent,  industrious,  and  able  to  find  its 
support  in  the  rewards  of  labor,  and  the  general  prosperity  which 
that  labor  secures.  Under  the  policy  which  treats  miners  as  mere 
tenants  at  will  permanent  settlements  are  impossible.  No  settler 
can  have  any  security  for  the  claim  he  may  select.  He  can  have 
no  sure  protection  against  its  forfeiture.  Since  he  has  no  better 
title  to  the  land  he  occupies  than  he  has  to  the  whole  of  the  un- 
occupied country  around  him,  he  is  perpetually  tempted  to  change 
his  temporary  habitation.  Having  no  tie  of  ownership  to  bind 
him  to  the  soil,  and  no  permanent  impi-ovements  on  it,  he  is  at  per- 
fect liberty  at  any  moment  to  "  take  up  his  bed  and  walk."  Hence 
it  is  that  our  miners  are  proverbially  nomadic.  Their  unsettled 
and  roving  habits  will  not  allow  them  to  accumulate  property  for 
themselves,  while  they  contribute  nothing  to  the  permanent  growth 
of  the  country.  What  Colonel  Benton  said  of  the  leasing  system 
in  Missouri  applies,  in  all  its  force,  to  the  superficial  mining  of  these 
wandering  tribes,  wrho  have  no  title  to  the  soil.  It  is  madness  to 
hope  for  revenue  to  the  government  or  the  development  of  our 
mineral  resources,  through  the  agency  of  such  a  population  and 
such  a  policy  ;  nor  is  there  any  possible  remedy,  save  in  the  sale  of 
these  lands  in  fee  to  actual  settlers. 

The  policy  for  which  I  plead  is  urged  by  kindred  and  stronger 
reasons.     Under  our  present  system  there  can  be  no  homes  in  the 


SALE   OF  MINERAL   LANDS.  255 

mining  regions.     Where   there  is  no  security  for  land  titles,  no 
permanent  communities  can   be  established.     The  miner  cannot 
afford  to  build  him  a  comfortable  house,  with  substantial  improve- 
ments around  him,  because  he  is  simply  a  tenant  at  will.     His 
dwelling  will  be  a  mere  hovel,  and  every  fact  of  his  condition  will 
testify  of  his  transitory  character.     In   a  country  thus  dealt  with 
homes   will   be   exceedingly  "  few  and  far  between."     In  fact,  a 
people  without  substantial  habitations,  and  whose   time   is  largely 
employed  in  migrating  from  place  to  place,  must  practically  dis- 
pense with  domestic  life.     That  the   proportion  of  men  to  women 
among  such  a  people  should  be  three  or  four  to  one  is  not  remark- 
able, nor  should  we  be  surprised   that  of  the  few  women   in  the 
mines  of  California  "a  considerable  share  are  neither  maids,  wives, 
nor  widows."     This  is  the  saddest  fact  connected  with  our  present 
mining  policy.     It  is  a  conspiracy  against   the   establishment  and 
sacredness  of  American  homes.     It  has  been  said  with  truth,  that 
the  best  part  of  the  education  of  every  man  and  woman  is  received 
at  home.     This  is  the  grand  school  for  virtue.     The  most  precious 
interests  of  life  belong  to  it.     One  of  our  most  gifted  American 
writers  says,  that  just  so  far  as   the  family  is  improved,  its  duties 
performed,   and    its    blessings    prized,  all   artificial   institutions  of 
society,  including  government  itself,  are  superseded.    The  family  is 
the  foundation  of  the  State,  the  peculiar  institution  of  God.     The 
government,  therefore,  should  extend  its  parental  wing  over  it,  and 
guard  it  as  the   mother  guards   the  life  of  her  child.     My  chief 
quarrel  with  our  existing  policy  is  that  it  makes  the  establishment 
of  homes  practically  impossible   in  vast  regions  of  our  unoccupied 
territory,  which  else  might  be  carved  up  into  independent  home- 
steads, and  dotted  over  by  smiling  habitations.     This  is  the  crown- 
ing argument   against  the  system   of  tenancies   at  will.      Under 
it,  civil    society,  practically  speaking,   cannot  exist  in   the    min- 
ing regions.     The  virtual  outlawry  of  woman  forbids  it.     Public 
opinion,  which  in  well-regulated  communities  exerts  a  wholesome 
power  over  the   individual,  is  here   unfelt.     The   better  class  of 
miners  soon  leave  the  country,  while  the  lower  and  more  brutalized 
classes   are   constantly  swelled  by  that   law  of  moral  gravitation 
which  draws  kindred   spirits  together.     Nothing  can   arrest   the 
growth    and  dominating  influence  of  this  evil  element  but  the 
policy  of  conferring  permanent  homes  upon  the  occupants  of  the 
soil.     This  will  drive  out  the  vicious,  the  thriftless,  the  dissipated, 
as  it  did  in  the  lead  and  copper  regions  of  the  Northwest,  and 
introduce    order,    industry,    and    real    civilization   in    their   stead. 


256  SALE    OF   MINERAL   LANDS. 

With  these,  the  wealth  of  the  mines  will  be  extracted,  and,  by 
becoming  the  subject  of  taxation,  increase  the  revenues  of  the 
government  while  rewarding  the  miner  fur  his  toil. 

The  sale  of  our  mineral  lands,  Mr.  Speaker,  is  to  be  vindicated 
by  still  other  considerations.  No  country  can  prosper  in  which 
land  does  not  become  valuable,  and  increase  in  value  with  the 
increase  of  population.  Our  present  policy  totally  overlooks  this 
principle.  By  denying  permanent  ownership  in  the  soil,  and  thus 
preventing  its  improvement,  it  necessarily  keeps  down  its  value. 
While  it  fails  to  draw  from  the  mines  the  wealth  which  they  con- 
tain, for  reasons  already  given,  it  cripples  enterprise  in  this  and 
other  directions  by  depriving  capital  of  the  best  possible  security 
for  its  investment.  Men  will  not  lend  their  capital  to  mining 
projects  when  the  title  to  the  soil  is  in  the  government,  and  cannot 
be  pledged  as  security.  This  non-employment  of  capital  not  only 
retards  mining,  but  keeps  idle  multitudes  of  laborers  who  need 
employment.  Capital,  wanting  investment  somewhere,  is  sent  to 
New  York  or  to  Europe.  According  to  Hittell,  to  whose  valuable 
and  interesting  work  on  the  "  Resources  of  California"  the  public 
is  greatly  indebted,  forty  million  dollars  a  year  are  shipped  from 
that  State  because  there  is  nothing  to  give  as  security.  "  We  offer 
to  pay,"  says  he,  "  twice  as  much  interest  as  anybody  else,  and  our 
offer  would  be  gladly  accepted  if  there  were  a  certainty  that  we 
would  pay  as  we  promise;  but  there  is  no  certainty,  no  security." 
Every  interest  suffers  under  this  false  policy.  It  operates  unequally. 
"  The  farming  districts,"  says  the  same  authority,  "  where  the  in- 
habitants own  the  land,  pay  heavy  land  taxes,  whereas  mining 
claims  pay  no  taxes  at  all.  The  result  is  that  the  taxation  upon  the 
men  in  the  valleys  is  about  three  times  as  heavy  as  upon  those  in 
the  mountains.  The  miners  generally  have  no  homes,  and  no 
fixed  propert}^,  and  cannot  be  forced  to  pay  taxes.  Most  of  the 
mining  counties  are  deeply  in  debt,  and  many  are  growing  deeper 
every  year.  The  only  way  to  equalize  the  taxation  is  to  sell  the 
mineral  lands,  and  compel  the  miner  to  pay  a  tax  upon  his  mine  as 
well  as  the  farmer  on  his  farm."  The  justness  of  these  observations 
will  not  be  questioned ;  and  they  will  apply  to  all  our  mining  re- 
gions as  perfectly  as  to  California. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  have  already  referred,  in  my  opening  remarks, 
to  the  question  of  our  finances,  and  to  the  singular  fact  that  our 
mines  of  gold  and  silver  have  yielded  no  revenue  to  the  govern- 
ment. I  have  urged  the  absolute  financial  necessity  of  some  rad- 
ical change  in  our  present  policy.     The  exposure  of  our  mineral 


SALE    OF   MINERAL   LANDS.  257 

lands  to  sale  would  not  only  inaugurate  the  true  policy  with  a  view 
to  the  settlement  of  these  lands,  and  the  development  of  their  re- 
sources, but  would  very  speedily  be  felt  in  its  returns  to  the  treas- 
ury. The  sales  could  not  fail  to  be  large.  The  spirit  of  enter- 
prise, of  adventure,  was  never  more  alive  among  our  people  than 
to-day.  The  demand  for  labor,  caused  by  the  waste  of  war,  can 
scarcely  be  appreciated,  and  is  recasting  the  judgment  of  the  whole 
country  as  to  the  value  of  foreign  laborers.  Immigration  is  ac- 
cordingly largely  on  the  increase,  and  is  destined  to  pour  in  upon  us 
to  an  extent  unexampled  in  the  past.  The  arrivals  at  the  port  of 
New  York  alone  last  year  were  one  hundred  and  eighty-five  thou- 
sand two  hundred  and  eight ;  and  there  is  no  fact  which  does  not 
look  to  its  increase,  at  least  for  several  years  to  come.  The  rapid 
settlement  of  our  distant  Territories  within  the  past  few  years, 
partly  attributable  to  the  beneficent  policy  of  our  Homestead  Law 
and  the  tempting  discoveries  of  their  precious  metals  which  have 
been  made,  are  exceedingly*  prophetic  of  their  speedy  population. 
The  Secretary  of  the  Interior,  in  his  report  for  the  year  1862, 
estimated  that  at  least  five  hundred  million  dollars  could  be  real- 
ized by  the  sale  of  our  mineral  lands  in  one-acre  lots,  after  grant- 
ing to  those  now  engaged  in  mining  a  clear  title  without  cost  to 
the  lands  they  occupy.  Should  they  bring  only  the  half,  or  even 
the  fourth  of  this  estimate,  it  would  furnish  an  argument  of  no 
inconsiderable  weight  in  favor  of  the  policy.  The  people,  un- 
doubtedly, would  be  glad  to  have  their  burdens  lightened  to  this 
extent,  and  they  will  demand  it  of  their  servants,  if  not  forbidden 
by  the  strongest  and  most  conclusive  reasons.  If  peace  now  pre- 
vailed throughout  our  borders  and  the  treasury  of  the  government 
were  full  to  overflowing,  as  we  have  known  it  in  the  past,  I  would 
not  urge  this  consideration.  I  would  apply  to  our  mineral  lands 
the  great  principle  embodied  in  the  Homestead  Law,  which  aims 
at  the  settlement  and  improvement  of  our  public  domain  as  at  once 
the  true  source  of  revenue  to  the  government  and  of  prosperity  to 
the  country.  I  agree  to  the  modification  of  that  principle  now, 
and  urge  it,  because  of  an  absolute  public  necessity  which  demands 
that  this  important  source  of  immediate  financial  relief  shall  not 
escape. 

And  now,  sir,  permit  me  to  refer  to  some  of  the  objections 
which  are  urged  to  the  policy  for  which  I  plead.  The  sale  of  our 
mineral  lands,  it  is  asserted,  will  place  them  in  the  grasp  of  spec- 
ulators, who  will  hoard  them  up  for  their  own  aggrandizement, 
and  "  to  the  prejudice  and   deprivation  of  the   many."     This  ob- 

17 


258  SALE    OF   MINERAL   LANDS. 

jection  suggests  several  replies.  In  the  first  place,  this  horror  of 
land  monopoly  is  shared  by  men  who  see  no  sort  of  objection  to 
the  wholesale  monopoly  of  all  our  mineral  lands  by  the  govern- 
ment. If  monopolies  are  pernicious,  as  I  admit  them  to  be,  they 
are  so  in  principle.  Government  monopolies  are  not  less  so  than 
others.  They  have  often  been  as  much  worse  as  their  greater 
power  of  evil  would  permit.  The  feudal  system  of  the  Old  World 
was  land  monopoly  in  its  glory  and  fruition,  in  the  crowning  luxu- 
riance of  its  infernal  sway  over  the  people,  who  toiled  as  its  slaves. 
The  theory  which  insists  upon  retaining  the  fee  of  our  mineral 
lands  in  the  government,  and  treating  the  miner  as  a  feudatory,  or 
serf,  is  of  European  origin.  It  is  borrowed  from  monarchical  in- 
stitutions and  ideas  which  we  profess  to  have  forsaken,  but  from 
which  we  are  by  no  means  yet  fully  divorced.  Our  institutions 
are  republican,  and  our  ideas  should  be  democratic,  not  monarchic. 
Under  the  feudal  or  kingly  system  government  is  everything,  the 
subject  nothing.  Our  American  ideas,  on  the  other  hand,  have 
respect  chiefly  to  the  individual,  and  regard  government  simply  as 
the  servant  of  the  people.  Sir,  I  submit  that  this  popular  cry 
against  the  monopoly  of  our  mineral  lands  by  speculators  does  not 
sound  very  well  in  the  mouths  of  those  who  justify  government 
monopoly,  and  have  not  yet  been  able  to  emancipate  themselves 
from  tlie  anti-republican  ideas  against  which  our  revolutionary 
fathers  contended.  Let  me  add,  that  what  I  now  say  furnishes  a 
reply  also  to  the  argument  often  urged  that  the  policy  of  European 
nations,  and  of  other  sovereignties  on  this  Continent,  is  against  the 
sale  of  their  mineral  lands.  Our  government  is  a  Republic,  and 
the  remotest  thing  possible  from  a  safe  precedent  for  us  is  the  ex- 
ample of  governments  resting  upon  feudal  ideas,  and  utterly  hostile 
to  the  rights  of  the  people. 

But  I  ask,  Mr.  Speaker,  why  is  there  more  danger  from  the 
monopoly  of  mineral  than  of  agricultural  lands  ?  The  monopoly 
of  the  latter  has  undoubtedly  been  a  great  evil,  yet  the  govern- 
ment, from  the  beginning,  has  parted  with  the  fee  to  purchasers, 
and  is  still  doing  so.  It  also  sells  its  lands  containing  lead,  iron, 
copper,  salines,  and  coal,  and  I  believe  the  opponents  of  the  meas- 
ure now  proposed  offer  no  objection.  Why  not  extend  the  same 
principle  to  other  minerals?  True,  the  intrinsic  value  of  gold 
and  silver  gives  to  them  a  peculiar  relation,  and  as  the  represent- 
ative of  values  and  the  medium  of  exchange  they  perform  a  func- 
tion totally  unlike  that  of  any  of  the  merely  useful  metals.  But 
I  am  unable  to  see  why  this  should  exempt  the   lands   containing 


SALE   OF   MINERAL   LANDS.  259 

them  from  the  general  policy  of  sale.  As  to  foreign  capitalists, 
the  bill  I  have  reported  forbids  their  becoming  purchasers  unless 
they  shall  have  declared  their  intention  to  become  naturalized. 
Undoubtedly  these  lands  will  be  the  subject  of  monopolies,  just  as 
will  our  coal  and  other  lands.  This  cannot  wholly  be  prevented 
by  any  possible  legislation,  or  any  failure  to  legislate.  Land 
monopoly  notoriously  prevails  now  in  the  great  mining  regions 
under  our  present  policy  of  withholding  the  fee.  Capitalists,  both 
foreign  and  domestic,  enter  these  regions  and  purchase  and  mo- 
nopolize the  possessory  rights  of  miners,  and  will  do  so  in  spite  of 
any  prohibitions.  This  is  a  sufficient  reply  to  all  that  can  be  said 
against  the  monopoly  of  the  fee  of  mining  lands.  I  believe,  how- 
ever, the  evil  of  such  monopoly  will  be  much  less  than  is  appre- 
hended. It  is  not  probable  that  capitalists  would  become  the  first 
purchasers,  or  that  the  richest  places  would  fall  into  their  hands. 
The  men  who  are  on  the  ground,  engaged  in  actual  mining,  would 
secure  the  best  investments,  for  under  this  bill  they  are  not  re- 
quired to  compete  with  men  who  could  outbid  them.  If  capitalists 
buy  the  lands,  they  cannot  afford  to  let  them  remain  unproductive 
If  they  should  secure  enough  to  be  fairly  named  a  monopoly,  their 
own  interest  would  prompt  them  to  develop  their  riches,  and  this 
will  bring  into  the  mining  regions  multitudes  of  laborers  who 
would  find  remunerative  employment  and  help  develop  the  wealth 
of  our  country. 

Another  principal  objection  to  the  policy  of  sale  is  the  difficulty 
of  fixing  upon  a  just  minimum  price.  Unquestionably  this  is  a 
real  practical  difficulty.  A  perfectly  just  minimum  is  impossible; 
but  the  same  is  true  of  our  lead,  copper,  iron,  and  coal  lands.  It 
is  even  true  of  our  agricultural  lands,  as  to  which  there  is  very 
great  inequality  of  value.  If  our  lands  containing  gold  and  silver 
are  exposed  to  sale,  all  we  can  do  is  to  approximate,  as  nearly  as 
we  can,  to  a  just  and  reasonable  price.  The  method  of  doing  this 
is  provided  for  in  the  sixth  section  of  the  bill.  The  geologist  for 
each  land  district,  for  which  the  bill  makes  provision,  in  connection 
with  the  register  and  receiver,  is  to  classify  the  mineral  lands  of 
the  district  with  reference  to  their  value,  and  the  subdivisions 
necessary  to  accommodate  actual  miners,  or  those  who  may  intend 
to  become  such,  and  report  to  the  Surveyor  General  and  the  Gen- 
eral Land  Office,  giving  the  minimum  price  of  each  class,  the 
location  and  extent  of  each  deposit  and  of  each  settlement  or  min- 
ing operation,  with  the  reasons  for  the  facts  reported.  The  Com- 
missioner of  the  General  Land  Office  then,  upon   these   facts  and 


260  SALE    OF  MINERAL   LANDS. 

reasons,  is  to  fix  the  minimum,  and  his  decision  is  to  be  final. 
Perhaps  this  process  will  secure  a  price  for  the  lands  as  nearly  just 
to  the  government  and  to  the  purchaser  as  any  that  can  be  devised. 
I  believe  it  meets  the  difficulty ;  and  since  the  vested  rights  of 
miners  are  protected  under  the  fifth  section  of  the  bill,  no  material 
injustice  can  result,  either  to  the  government  or  the  purchaser. 

Mr.  Speaker,  there  are  other  and  minor  objections  to  which  I 
think  I  need  not  refer.  They  are  all  met  or  overcome  by  the 
arguments  already  presented,  joined  to  the  palpable  folly  of  further 
maintaining  the  present  suicidal  policy  of  the  government.  Nor 
shall  I  stop  to  discuss  the  details  of  the  bill  I  have  reported,  the 
leading  features  of  which  have  already  been  stated.  It  has  been 
prepared  with  much  care,  and  with  the  assistance  of  some  of  the 
ablest  men  in  the  country,  whose  extensive  knowledge  of  our  land 
system  gives  peculiar  weight  to  their  opinions,  and  who  have  given 
to  the  subject  much  thought.  The  policy  which  it  proposes  has 
also  the  decided  approval  of  many  of  our  most  distinguished  public 
characters,  including  such  men  as  Colonel  Benton,  Chief  Justice 
Chase,  General  Fremont,  Robert  J.  Walker,  Hugh  McCulloch, 
and  Horace  Greeley.  I  may  mention  also  Hon.  John  Wilson, 
who  so  ably  presided  over  our  General  Land  Office  years  ago,  and 
whose  thorough  acquaintance  with  the  subject  should  command 
great  respect  for  his  judgment.  I  add  further,  that  the  most 
intelligent  men  I  have  met  from  California  and  other  mining  re- 
gions  who  speak  from  actual  observation  and  extensive  experience 
in  mining,  express  the  same  opinion.  Undoubtedly,  the  bill  is 
imperfect.  A  measure  so  revolutionary  of  past  ideas  and  policy, 
and  dealing  with  interests  so  vast  and  peculiar,  must  of  necessity, 
to  some  extent,  prove  an  experiment.  I  believe  it  will  be  a  grand 
one.  Holding  the  principle  of  the  measure  to  be  sound,  I  would 
launch  it,  trusting  to  time  and  experience  to  point  out  its  defects 
and  suggest  the  needed  remedies.  I  sincerely  hope  the  Thirty- 
eighth  Congress  will  not  close  its  labors  without  adding  this  bill  to 
the  list  of  those  great  measures  which  have  already  signalized  its 
legislation.  The  passage  of  the  bill  will  powerfully  stimulate  for- 
eign immigration,  and  the  settlement  of  the  great  Pacific  States  of 
the  future.  By  drawing  into  our  mining  regions  a  large  and  con- 
stantly swelling  stream  of  settlers  it  will  demand  and  necessitate 
the  speedy  construction  of  our  great  railway  thoroughfares  to  the 
Pacific,  which  shall  belt  the  Continent  with  ribs  of  iron,  and  prove 
themselves  the  grandest  of  commercial  enterprises  and  the  might- 
iest bonds  of  national  union.    In  securing  perfect  land  titles  it  will 


SALE   OF   MINERAL  LANDS.  261 

build  up  permanent  settlements,  promote  a  more  thorough  knowl- 
edge of  localities,  and  institute  a  more  profitable  system  of  mining 
than  would  otherwise  be  possible.  The  establishment  of  settle- 
ments in  the  mines'will  lead  to  the  exploration  and  purchase  of  the 
agricultural  lands  in  the  valleys,  and  thus  develop  their  productive 
power.  It  will  introduce  social  order,  domestic  life,  fixed  habits, 
free  schools,  homogeneous  communities,  and  general  prosperity,  in 
the  place  of  itinerant  and  scattered  tribes  whose  condition  could 
best  be  defined  by  the  absence  of  all  these  blessings.  It  would 
cement  and  consolidate  the  Union,  by  intrenching  the  government 
in  the  hearts  and  homes  of  the  teeming  millions  whose  habitations 
are  to  be  set  up  in  the  great  empire  of  States  now  so  rapidly 
springing  into  life  in  the  distant  West.  It  would  rebuke  those  feu- 
dal ideas  to  which  the  government  has  so  long  lent  its  sanction,  and 
recognize  the  independence  and  dignity  of  labor.  Holding  these 
views,  Mr.  Speaker,  and  embracing  them,  as  I  do,  with  ardor,  I 
have  labored  with  some  zeal  to  awaken  among  our  public  men  an 
interest  in  the  subject ;  and  I  shall  regard  it  as  one  of  the  many 
grand  and  providential  compensations  of  this  war  if  the  financial 
crisis  which  has  been  its  result  shall  prepare  us  to  enact  this  great 
and  far-reaching  measure,  and  thus  to  lay  the  foundations  of  Chris- 
tian civilization  and  genuine  democracy  in  the  budding  Common- 
wealths of  the  Pacific. 


DANGERS  AND    DUTIES    OF    THE  HOUR  — RE- 
CONSTRUCTION  AND   SUFFRAGE. 

IN  THE  HALL  OF   THE   HOUSE   OF  KEPRESENTATIVES,  INDIANAPOLIS, 
NOVEMBER  17,  1865. 

[This  specimen  of  a  Western  stump  speech,  not  intended  for  publication,  but  un- 
expectedly reported  for  the  "  Cincinnati  Gazette,"  was  reprinted  by  the  friends  of  Mr. 
Julian  in  a  large  pamphlet  edition.  The  Legislature  being  in  session,  the  use  of  the 
hall  of  the  House  was  tendered  him  by  resolution  ;  and  on  motion  of  Mr.  Kilgore,  a 
member  from  Delaware  County,  the  resolution  was  so  amended  as  to  request  Mr.  Ju- 
lian to  be  very  explicit  in  saying  whether  he  agreed  or  disagreed  with  the  policy  of 
President  Johnson.  This  will  explain  certain  allusions  in  the  speech.  Its  line  of  ar- 
gument will  readily  be  appreciated  by  those  who  will  judge  it  in  the  light  of  our 
subsequent  history,  and  remember  the  year  1865  as  an  era  of  undefined  politics,  and 
of  hesitation  and  doubt  on  the  part  of  many  Republican  leaders.  Even  Mr.  Julian's 
own  constituents  were  not  prepared  for  his  views.  The  Radical  theory  of  Reconstruc- 
tion, which  afterward  prevailed,  was  then  by  no  means  established ;  while  the  rebel 
theory,  whose  motto  was  "  Once  a  State  always  a  State,"  found  a  champion  in  Presi- 
dent Johnson.  Several  prominent  Republicans  joined  him  at  once,  and  sought  to 
rally  the  party  in  this  attempted  new  departure,  and  in  unqualified  hostility  to  the 
policy  of  negro  suffrage.  Chief  among  these  was  Governor  Morton,  who,  in  the  fall  of 
this  year,  made  his  memorable  Richmond  speech,  to  the  leading  positions  of  which  Mr. 
Julian  replies ;  but  his  argument,  in  substance,  had  been  repeated,  and  with  decided 
effect,  in  a  vigorous  canvass  of  his  Congressional  district  during  the  spring  and  sum- 
mer months.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  time  has  overwhelmingly  settled  the  questions 
of  Reconstruction  and  Suffrage  against  the  theories  of  the  Johnson  Administration 
and  its  friends.] 

The  meeting  having  been  organized  by  calling  Governor  Dun- 
ning to  the  chair,  Mr.  Julian  spoke  as  follows  :  — 

Mr.  Chairman  —  Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  —  Before  proceed- 
ing to  say  what  I  propose  to  say  to-night,  I  ask  leave  to  make  a 
statement,  due  to  myself  and  to  you.  The  charge  has  been  circu- 
lated, through  the  press  and  otherwise,  recently,  that  I  have  been 
making  speeches  inside  of  my  district  and  outside  of  it,  denuncia- 
tory of  Governor  Morton  and  President  Johnson,  and  that  I  have 
been  seeking  by  factious  movements  to  divide  and  disorganize  the 
Union  party.  I  think  it  due  to  truth  to  say  that  these  charges  are 
wholly  unfounded.  I  have  made  quite  a  number  of  speeches  dur- 
ing the  last  few  weeks,  but  in  not  one  of  them  have  I  spoken  of 
Governor  Morton  or  President  Johnson  in  any  other  terms  than 
those  of  perfect  courtesy  and  respect.    I  have  differed,  to  some  ex- 


DANGERS   AND  DUTIES    OF   THE   HOUR.  263 

tent,  with  President  Johnson,  as  I  understand  his  policy  ;  but  I 
have  never  had  a  thought  of  indulging  in  any  unkind  words 
toward  him,  having  known  him  since  1849,  when  we  first  met  in 
Congress  and  became  personal  friends  through  our  earnest  advo- 
cacy of  the  homestead  policy,  in  which  we  stood  almost  alone. 
I  am  quite  sure  that  I  still  enjoy  his  respect  and  friendship.  Nor 
is  there  any  truth  in  the  charge  that  I  am  seeking  to  divide  the 
Union  party.  On  the  contrary,  I  have  sought  by  all  the  means  in 
my  power  to  unite  and  consolidate  that  party  in  my  district,  in 
which  I  have  almost  exclusively  labored.  I  am  sure  that  my 
labors  have  not  been  wholly  fruitless,  and  that  to-day  that  party 
is  more  perfectly  united  and  consolidated  there  than  it  ever  has 
been  at  any  previous  period  of  its  history. 

I  ought,  perhaps,  to  make  another  reference  in  the  outset.  I 
have  been  invited  to  address  the  people  here  by  some  prominent 
citizens  of  this  city,  and  by  some  of  the  members  of  the  Legisla- 
ture, and  this  hall  has  been  tendered  me  for  the  purpose,  subject 
to  certain  instructions.  It  was  thought  wise  to  instruct  me  to  be 
very  explicit  and  unambiguous  as  to  whether  I  agree  or  disagree 
with  the  policy  of  President  Johnson.  What  will  be  the  penalty 
of  disobedience  I  am  not  advised. 

I  confess  I  am  gratified  —  I  really  feel  flattered  —  to  find,  unex- 
pectedly, that  my  opinions  are  of  so  much  moment  that  the  House 
of  Representatives  of  Indiana  have  seen  fit  to  pass  a  resolution  call- 
ing for  great  carefulness  on  my  part  in  their  expression.  There 
may  have  been  wisdom  in  doing  this.  A  man  who  skulks  habit- 
ually, and  about  whose  opinions  nobody  ever  could  learn  anything 
very  definitely,  particularly  on  the  subject  of  slavery  and  anti- 
slavery  as  connected  with  our  politics,  may  properly  be  coerced 
into  plainness  of  speech  ;  it  may  be  well  enough  to  smoke  him  out, 
and  compel  him  to  declare  himself  unequivocally.  Certainly,  I 
have  no  manner  of  complaint  to  make  on  that  subject.  I  must  say, 
however,  that  I  feel  some  embarrassment  as  to  the  performance  of 
the  task  assigned  me.  If  the  House  had  told  me  what,  in  their 
opinion,  the  policy  of  President  Johnson  is,  I  could  then  have  told 
you  precisely  whether  I  agree  or  disagree  with  him.  But  I  find 
that  Copperheads,  some  of  the  vilest  and  meanest  of  them,  indorse 
in  unqualified  terms  the  policy  of  President  Johnson.  Now,  cer- 
tainly the  Union  men  have  not  gone  over  to  the  Copperheads, 
and  I  doubt  very  much  whether  the  Copperheads  have  been  really 
converted  and  come  over  to  us.  There  is,  then,  a  difference  of 
opinion  as  to  what  the  policy  is.     In  requiring  me,  therefore,  to  say 


264  DANGERS   AND  DUTIES   OF  THE   HOUR. 

whether  I  approve  or  disapprove,  I  submit  that  it  would  have 
been  proper  for  you,  gentlemen,  to  have  told  me  what  in  your 
judgment  the  President's  policy  is. 

There  is  another  difficulty.  President  Johnson  himself  says 
his  policy  is  merely  an  experiment,  and  perhaps  he  will  abandon 
it  to-morrow.  Then  of  what  use  would  be  your  bill  of  discovery 
filed  against  me,  requiring  me  to  say  whether  I  agree  with  him  or 
not  ?  These  are  revolutionary  times.  Marvelous  changes  in  the 
opinions  of  men  have  been  wrought  within  the  past  four  years. 
The  watch-words  of  the  hour  are  transition,  growth,  development. 
Who  can  be  so  infatuated  as  to  single  out  any  present  phase  of  our 
politics,  and  seek  to  stereotype  it  into  a  test  of  any  man's  political 
orthodoxy  ?  If  it  be  true  that  the  policy  of  the  President  is  sim- 
ply that  of  referring  the  whole  matter  of  reconstruction  to  Con- 
gress, then  I  can  say,  unequivocally,  that  I  am  for  it,  for  I  believe, 
decidedly,  that  the  business  of  reconstruction  belongs  to  Congress. 

Upon  the  whole,  gentlemen,  I  prefer  to  go  on  in  my  own  way, 
and  say  what  I  think,  explicitly,  as  I  usually  do,  leaving  each  one 
of  you  to  determine  for  himself  the  question  as  to  whether  I  agree 
or  disagree  with  President  Johnson,  and  the  far  more  important 
question  whether  I  am  right  or  wrong  in  my  views. 

Let  me  now  invite  your  attention  to  some  of  the  dangers  and 
duties  of  the  hour  ;  and  I  remark  in  the  outset,  that  the  only 
question  that  has  been  absolutely  settled  by  this  war  is  the  fact 
that  by  numbers  and  violence  we  have  mastered  the  rebels.  All 
else  is  in  dispute.  Slavery  is  not  certainly  abolished.  The  proc- 
lamation of  President  Lincoln  did  not  pretend  to  abolish  the  insti- 
tution of  slavery  ;  and  even  the  effect  of  that  proclamation  in 
giving  freedom  to  the  slaves  in  certain  districts  remains  to  be  ad- 
judicated by  the  courts.  Your  constitutional  amendment  has  not 
yet  received  the  approval  of  three  fourths  of  the  States,  which, 
according  to  the  views  of  the  administration,  is  requisite  to  its 
adoption.  The  question  of  loyal  suffrage  in  the  South  —  the  great 
question  of  the  day  —  is  one  about  which  there  is  a  wide  differ- 
ence of  opinion,  even  among  loyal  men.  Do  you  mean  to  gather 
the  fruits  of  this  war,  or  to  scatter  them  to  the  winds  ?  Shall  you 
reap  the  rich  harvest  of  victory  now  within  your  grasp  and  ready 
for  the  sickle,  or  allow  it  to  be  overtaken  by  blight  ?  Through 
the  madness  of  the  rebels  the  way  is  opened  up  to  this  nation  to 
a  career  of  glory  otherwise  entirely  beyond  our  reach.  Shall  we 
slumber  over  our  grand  opportunity  ?  There  has  been  no  moment, 
in  my  judgment,  since  the  beginning  of  this  war,  so  full  of  peril 


I 

DANGERS  AND  DUTIES   OF  THE  HOUR.  265 

to  the  nation  as  the  present.  I  may  refer  to  the  testimony  of  Gov- 
ernor Brownlow,  who  says  the  only  difference  between  the  rebels 
of  to-day  and  of  1861  is  that  a  good  many  of  them  are  under 
the  ground.  They  are  still  unconverted,  unregenerate,  and  the 
thorough  reconstruction  of  government  and  society  in  the  States 
recently  in  revolt  can  never  be  accomplished  by  half-way  meas- 
ures or  a  temporizing  policy. 

In  my  judgment,  our  first  and  immediate  duty  is  the  adequate 
punishment  of  the  rebel  leaders  ;  the  adequate  chastisement  of  the 
villains  who  plunged  the  Republic  into  war.  This  involves  the 
whole  question  of  the  contest.  Decide  it  right,  and  it  opens  the 
way  to  a  ready  settlement  of  all  the  other  questions  in  dispute. 
Decide  it  wrong,  and  it  may  give  to  the  winds  all  the  fruits  of  your 
victory. 

I  repeat  it,  this  question  involves  the  whole  question  of  the  war. 
For,  if  treason  is  not  a  crime,  but  a  mere  difference  of  opinion,  an 
honest  mistake  of  judgment  about  the  right  of  a  State  to  secede  — 
if,  as  Lord  John  Russell  said,  it  was  on  the  part  of  the  North  a 
war  for  power,  and  on  the  part  of  the  South  a  war  for  indepen- 
dence, there  being  no  other  question  in  it ;  if  the  "  New  York  Day 
Book  "  was  right  in  saying,  the  other  day,  that  the  whole  contest 
grew  out  of  a  mere  "misapprehension"  between  the  North  and 
South,  — then  our  war  of  four  years,  in  which  we  professed  to  be 
patriots,  fighting  for  nationality  and  freedom,  is  an  insult  to  all  the 
ages,  a  horrid  mockery  of  the  Almighty  ;  and  we  shall  deserve,  as 
we  shall  receive,  the  retribution  due  to  our  transcendent  guilt.  If, 
however,  treason  is  a  crime,  and  the  highest  of  all  crimes,  includ- 
ing in  it  all  lesser  villainies,  so  that  the  rebels  in  compassing  it  had 
to  run  over  the  whole  gamut  of  devilment  and  mischief,  ending 
their  career  in  an  infernal  leap  at  the  nation's  throat ;  why,  then, 
at  the  end  of  this  war  you  ought  to  make  a  fit  example  of  these 
traitors,  and  thus  render  a  repetition  of  their  crime  difficult  in  the 
future. 

Suppose  a  man  were  to  come  among  you  to-night,  and  could 
persuade  you  that  treason  and  loyalty  are  about  the  same  thing ; 
that  right  and  wrong  are  convertible  terms  ;  that  the  difference 
between  virtue  and  vice,  good  and  evil,  is  "  all  in  your  eye  ; " 
that  God  and  the  devil  are  the  same  personage  under  different 
names,  and  that  it  does  not  matter  much  under  whose  banner  you 
fight,  —  suppose  he  could  thus  persuade  you  to  uproot  the  foun- 
dations of  morals,  society,  government,  of  everything  sacred  in 
heaven  or  on  earth,  —  would  he  not  be  the  most  execrable  creat- 


266  DANGERS   AND   DUTIES    OF   THE   HOUR. 

ure  in  the  universe?  If  he  could  indoctrinate  you  and  the  world 
with  his  ideas,  he  would  convert  this  beautiful  earth  of  ours, 
"wrapped  round  with  sweet  air  and  blest  by  sunshine,"  into  a  first- 
class  hell,  and  the  devil  would  be  king.  My  friends,  you  dare  not 
trifle  with  this  question  of  the  adequate  punishment  of  rebels. 
You  take  the  murderer  here  in  Marion  County,  you  indict  him, 
try  and  convict  him,  build  a  gallows  and  hang  him  ;  and  the 
world  says  amen.  The  pirate,  "  the  miserable  pickpocket,  boards 
a  vessel  on  the  sea,  murders  a  few  sailors,  steals  a  few  bales  of  cot- 
ton, and  the  civilized  world  chases  him  to  the  gallows,"  as  unfit  to 
live.  But  Jeff"  Davis  is  not  an  ordinary  assassin  or  pirate.  He 
did  not  murder  a  single  citizen,  but  he   murdered  in  cold  blood 

O  7 

hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  ;  he  didn't  board  a  ship  on  the  sea, 
and  murder  a  few  sailors,  but  he  boarded  the  great  ship  of  State, 
and  tried  by  all  the  power  of  his  evil  genius  to  sink  her,  cargo  and 
crew,  with  the  political  hopes  of  the  world  forever,  into  the  abyss 
of  everlasting  night!  And  his  guilt  is  as  much  greater  than  that 
of  an  ordinary  assassin  as  the  life  of  a  great  Republic  is  greater  than 
the  life  of  one  man.  Each  one  of  these  leaders  was  a  national  assas- 
sin, with  his  dagger  in  his  hand,  aiming  it  at  the  nation's  vitals ; 
aiming  to  plunge  it  into  the  white  breast  of  the  mother  who  bore 
him,  and  nurtured  him  from  infancy  ;  and  his  guilt  is  to  be  multi- 
plied ajid  compounded  by  the  millions  whose  interests  were  put  in 
peril. 

Suppose  you  were  to  indict  Jeff  Davis  to-night,  as  our  fathers 
indicted  George  III.  ;  the  indictment,  in  substance,  would  be  about 
this:  He  has  murdered  three  hundred  thousand  of  our  soldiers ; 
he  has  mangled  and  maimed  for  life  three  hundred  thousand  more ; 
he  has  duplicated  these  atrocities  upon  his  own  half  of  the  Union, 
and  upon  his  own  miserable  followers.  He  has  organized  great 
conspiracies  here  in  the  North  and  Northwest,  to  lay  in  rapine  and, 
blood  the  towns,  and  villages,  and  cities,  and  plantations  of  the 
whole  loyal  portion  of  the  land.  He  has  sought  to  introduce  into 
the  United  States,  and  to  nationalize  on  this  Continent,  pestilence, 
in  the  form  of  yellow  fever ;  an  enterprise  which,  had  it  suc- 
ceeded, would  have  startled  Heaven  itself  with  the  agony  and 
sorrow  it  would  have  lavished  upon  the  land.  He  has  put  to 
death,  by  the  slow  torture  of  starvation  in  rebel  prisons,  sixty 
thousand  of  our  sons  and  brothers.  He  has  been  a  party  to  the 
assassination  of  our  martyred  President.  He  has  poisoned  our 
wells  ;  planted  infernal  machines  in  the  track  of  his  armies  ;  mur- 
dered our  wounded  soldiers;    boiled  the  dead  bodies  of  our  boys 


DANGERS  AND  DUTIES  OF  THE  HOUR.       267 

in  cauldrons,  and  sawed  up  their  bones  into  jewelry  to  dec- 
orate the  God-forsaken  bodies  of  his  rebel  followers.  He  has 
hatched  into  life  whole  broods  of  villainies  that  are  enough,  it  seems 
to  me,  to  make  the  devil  himself  turn  pale  at  the  spectacle.  He 
has  done  everything  that  a  devil  incarnate  could  do  to  let  loose 
"the  whole  contagion  of  hell,"  and  convert  the  earth  into  one 
grand  carnival  of  demons. 

But,  gentlemen,  we  have  caught  him.  By  the  providence  of 
God,  and  through  the  vigilance  of  your  soldiers,  he  is  in  your 
power  to-day.  Now  I  would  indict  him,  and  pay  him  the  compli- 
ment of  a  decent  trial  according  to  the  forms  of  law.  I  would  'con- 
vict him,  and  then  build  a  gallows  and  hang  him,  in  the  name  of 
God.  Talk  about  mercy  to  Jeff  Davis  !  Why  it  is  not  in  the 
dictionary  !  It  is  like  the  Constitution  in  relation  to  the  rebels, 
who  have  sinned  away  their  rights  under  it  by  treason.  It  has 
ceased  to  exist,  as  to  him.  When  you  ask  me  to  exercise  mercy 
at  the  expense  of  justice,  I  decline.  I  know  nothing  about  mercy 
when  you  can  only  reach  it  by  trampling  justice  under  foot.  I 
don't  ask  vengeance.  Davis  has  committed  treason,  and  the  Con- 
stitution demands  his  punishment.  In  the  name  of  half  a  million  sol- 
diers who  have  gone  up  to  the  throne  of  God  as  witnesses  against 
"the  deep  damnation  of  their  taking  off'' — in  the  name  of  your 
living  soldiers  —  in  the  name  of  the  Republic,  whose  life  has  been 
put  in  deadly  peril  —  in  the  name  of  the  great  future,  whose  fate 
to-day  swings  in  the  balance,  depending  on  the  example  you  make 
of  treason,  I  demand  the  execution  of  Jeff  Davis.  And  inasmuch 
as  the  gallows  is  the  symbol  of  infamy  throughout  the  civilized 
world  I  would  give  him  the  gallows,  which  is  far  too  good  for  his 
neck.  Not  for  all  the  honors  and  offices  of  this  o-overnment  would 
I  spare  him,  if  in  my  power.  I  should  expect  the  ghosts  of  half  a 
million  soldiers  would  haunt  my  poor  recreant  life  to  the  grave. 

And  I  would  not  stop  with  Davis.  Why  should  L?  There  is 
General  Lee,  as  hungry  for  the  gallows  as  Davis.  He  is  running 
at  large  up  and  down  the  hills  and  valleys  of  Old  Virginia,  as  if 
nothing  at  all  had  happened ;  and  lately  I  have  heard  that  he  has 
been  offered  the  presidency  of  a  college  ;  going  to  turn  missionary 
and  school- master,  I  suppose,  to  "teach  the  young  idea  how  to 
shoot!''''  At  the  same  time,  as  we  are  informed,  he  is  to  write  a 
history  of  the  rebellion.  Gentlemen,  I  would  not  have  him  write 
that  history.  I  would  have  it  written  by  a  loyal  man,  and  I  would 
have  him  put  in  a  chapter  giving  an  account  of  the  hanging  of  Lee 
as  a  traitor.     What  right  has  Lee  to  be  running  at  large,  while 


268  DANGERS   AND   DUTIES   OF   THE   HOUR. 

the  government  thus  confesses  that  treason  is  no  crime  ?  What 
right  has  he  to  be  any  place,  without  repentance,  except  in  the 
ninth,  or  lowest  hell,  where  Dante  says  all  traitors  are  found? 
What  right  have  you  to  cheat  the  Constitution  out  of  his  neck  ? 
I  notice  that  Wirz,  some  days  before  he  was  hung,  sent  for  a  copy 
of  "  Baxter's  Call  to  the  Unconverted."  I  would  give  Lee  a  copy 
of  the  same  book,  but  I  would  let  the  gallows  have  him,  and  leave 
God  to  determine  what  should  be  done  with  his  soul. 

Nor  would  I  stop  with  Lee.  I  would  hang  liberally,  while  I  had 
my  hand  in.  I  would  make  the  gallows  respectable  in  these  latter 
days,  by  dedicating  it  to  Christian  uses.  I  would  dispose,  of  a 
score  or  two  of  the  most  conspicuous  of  the  rebel  leaders,  not  for 
vengeance,  but  to  satisfy  public  justice,  and  make  expensive  the 
enterprise  of  treason  for  all  time  to  come.  I  wish  we  could  hang 
them  to  the  sky  that  bends  over  us,  so  that  all  the  nations  of  the 
earth  might  see  the  spectacle,  and  learn  what  it  costs  to  set  fire  to 
a  free  government  like  this.  If  these  men  are  not  punished,  and 
you  allow  the  infernal  poison  to  sift  itself  down  into  the  general 
mind  that  treason  is  no  crime,  in  a  little  while  we  shall  be  shaking 
hands  with  our  dear  Southern  brethren,  the  government  may  get 
back  into  its  old  ruts,  and  another  horrid  war  may  be  the  harvest 
of  our  recreancy  to  our  trust. 

But  suppose  you  were  to  hang  or  exile  all  these  leaders,  —  for  if 
you  don't  hang  all  of  them  you  should  put  them  out  of  the  way,  — 
your  work,  then,  is  only  just  begun.  You  ought,  in  the  next  place, 
to  take  their  large  landed  estates  and  parcel  them  out  among  our 
soldiers  and  seamen,  and  the  poor  people  of  the  South,  black  and 
white,  as  a  basis  of  real  democracy  and  genuine  civilization.  Why, 
yonder  is  Bob  Johnson,  of  Arkansas,  an  arch  rebel  leader,  who  owns 
forty  thousand  acres  of  rich  land ;  enough  to  make  four  hundred 
farms  for  so  many  industrious  loyal  men.  I  would  give  the  land  to 
them,  and  not  leave  enough  to  bury  his  carcass  in.  And  yonder  is 
Jake  Thompson,  one  of  old  Jimmy  Buchanan's  beloved,  and  beau- 
tiful, and  blessed  disciples  ;  the  man  who  stole  our  Indian  bonds,  and 
who  is  so  mean  that  I  could  never  find  words  to  describe  him. 
He  owns  forty  thousand  acres  or  more,  and  I  would  take  it  and 
divide  it  out  in  the  way  mentioned.  The  leading  rebels  in  the 
South  are  the  great  landlords  of  that  country.  One  half  to  three 
fourths  of  all  the  cultivated  land  belongs  to  them,  and  if  you  would 
take  it,  as  you  have  the  right  to  do,  by  confiscation,  you  would  not 
disturb  the  rights  of  the  great  body  of  the  people  in  the  South,  for 
they  never  owned  the  land.    I  had  the  honor  to  propose,  in  a  bill  I 


DANGERS   AND   DUTIES    OF   THE   HOUR.  269 

introduced  into  the  last  Congress,  this  identical  thing.  It  has  passed 
one  House  bj  a  large  majority,  but  has  failed  thus  far  in  the  other.  If 
you  don't  do  something  of  that  kind,  you  will  have  in  the  rebel 
States  a  system  of  serfdom  over  the  poor  almost  as  much  to  be  de- 
plored as  slavery  itself.  Rich  Yankees  will  go  down  there,  —  and 
I  don't  want  to  abuse  the  Yankees,  for  they  have  made  this  coun- 
try what  it  is  ;  but  there  are  Yankees  who  believe  that  the  almighty 
dollar  is  the  only  living  and  true  God,  and  it  is  said  some  of  them 
would  wade  into  the  mouth  of  hell  after  a  bale  of  cotton.  I  don't 
know  whether  that  is  so  or  not,  for  I  have  never  seen  it  tried. 
But  there  are  men  who  would  go  down  and  buy  up  these  estates, 
and  establish  a  system  of  wages-slavery,  of  serfdom  over  the  poor, 
that  would  be  as  intolerable  as  the  old  system  of  servitude.  You 
would  have  the  state  of  things  in  Mexico  repeated,  where  one  man 
owns  land  enough  to  make  a  State  as  large  as  Rhode  Island ;  or  in 
England,  where  one  man  can  mount  his  horse  and  ride  a  hundred 
miles  to  the  sea  on  his  own  land,  and  where  all  the  land  is  owned 
by  one  five-hundredth  part  of  the  population.  The  most  degraded 
class  of  people  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  almost,  are  the  English 
agricultural  laborers,  —  sunk  so  low  in  the  scale  of  civilization 
that  you  can  compare  them  to  nobody  so  fitly  as  to  the  sand-hill- 
ers  and  clay-eaters  of  South  Carolina  and  Georgia,  whom  even  the 
negroes  look  down  upon  and  call  "  poor  white  trash." 

You  see,  gentlemen,  why  it  was  that  England  built  and  furnished 
the  rebels  with  iron-clads  and  other  means  of  warfare.  She  knew 
the  success  of  the  North  would  be  the  prelude  to  the  overthrow  of 
her  landed  system.  She  knew,  in  the  language  of  Thomas  Car- 
lyle,  that  the  success  of  the  Union  cause  in  this  country  would 
send  England  to  Democracy  on  an  express  train  ;  and  it  will,  if  we 
are  faithful.  She  is  on  the  brink  of  a  volcano  that  threatens  to 
swallow  her  up.  Any  one  of  these  mornings  the  landless  laborers 
of  England  may  rise  up  under  some  bold  captain,  and  march  to  the 
gates  of  power  and  demand  a  home  upon  the  soil,  and  a  ballot 
with  which  to  defend  it ;  and  they  may  drench  that  land  in  blood 
if  their  demand  is  not  heeded. 

Do  you  want  to  see  her  condition  reenacted  in  those  fair  regions 
of  the  South?  No,  you  want  no  order  of  nobility  there  save  that 
of  the  laboring  masses.  Instead  of  large  estates,  widely  scattered 
settlements,  wasteful  agriculture,  popular  ignorance,  social  degra- 
dation, the  decline  of  manufactures,  contempt  for  honest  labor,  and 
a  pampered  oligarchy,  you  want  small  farms,  thrifty  tillage,  free 
schools,  social  independence,  flourishing  manufactures  and  the  arts, 


270  DANGERS   AXD   DUTIES   OF   THE   HOUR. 

respect  for  honest  labor,  and  equality  of  political  rights.  You  can 
lav  hold  of  these  blessings,  on  the  one  hand,  or  these  correspond- 
ing curses,  on  the  other,  just  as  you  please.  Those  regions  are  in 
your  plastic  hands,  to  be  cursed  with  evils  or  crowned  with  bless- 
ings for  all  coining  time.  Do  your  duty  in  this  golden  moment, 
and  the  hills  and  valleys  of  the  South  will  lift  up  their  voices  in 
thankfulness  to  the  Author  of  all  good  for  their  new  birth  and  glo- 
rious transfiguration  ;  and  the  people  of  the  South  and  the  people 
of  the  North  will  become  again  one  people,  united  in  patriotic 
aspirations  for  their  common  country. 

But  suppose  you  have  hung  or  exiled  the  leaders  of  the  rebellion, 
and  disposed  of  their  great  landed  estates  in  the  way  indicated  ; 
your  work  is  then  only  half  done.  Without  something  else,  you 
will  fail  after  all  to  reap  the  full  rewards  of  your  sufferings  and 
sacrifices.  In  order  to  complete  your  work  of  reconstruction,  you 
must  put  the  ballot  into  the  hands  of  the  loyal  men  of  the  South  ; 
and  this  makes  it  necessary  for  me  to  talk  about  this  negro  ques- 
tion a  little.  I  am  sorry  about  this,  for  you  know  how  gladly  I 
would  avoid  that  subject  if  I  could.  I  hardly  ever  allude  to  it  in 
my  speeches  unless  it  gets  right  in  my  way,  and  then  I  only  take 
it  up  to  remove  it,  so  that  I  can  get  along.  I  warn  you,  however, 
not  to  get  excited  at  what  I  am  going  to  say  until  you  know  what 
it  is  ;  for  maybe  none  of  you  will  disagree  with  me,  and  it  is  not 
worth  while  to  anticipate  trouble.  Let  me  say  to  you,  too,  by  way 
of  quieting  your  nerves,  that  I  won't  preach  in  favor  of  black  suf- 
frage to-night,  nor  white  suffrage.  All  that  I  want  is  loyal  suf- 
frage,  without  regard  to  color.  Now,  that  is  a  fair  proposition.  I 
will  tell  you  another  thing,  by  way  of  consolation  ;  I  won't  preach 
any  of  my  "  radicalism  "  to-night ;  I  won't  urge  any  of  my  fanat- 
ical notions.  The  fact  is,  I  have  got  to  be  a  Conservative  lately. 
I  wish  simply  to  present  some  of  the  old  conservative  doctrines  of 
the  founders  and  framers  of  the  Republic,  —  men  whose  memories 
you  all  revere,  and  whose  counsels  you  will  be  glad  to  accept  if 
you  are  loyal ;  and  everybody  is  loyal  now,  or  ought  to  be. 

During  the  War  of  the  Revolution,  that  primitive  era  of  the 
nation's  life,  that  golden  age  of  public  virtue  and  private,  as  we 
are  accustomed  to  regard  it,  negroes  voted  in  all  the  States  or 
colonies  of  the  Union,  except  South  Carolina,  —  poor,  sin-smitten, 
Heaven-forsaken  spot,  that  might  have  been  sunk  in  the  sea  forty 
years  ago  without  material  detriment,  and  without,  in  my  opin- 
ion, disturbing  Divine  Providence  in  his  manner  of  governing  the 
world.     In   every  one  of  the   States,  except  South  Carolina,  the 


DANGERS   AND   DUTIES   OF   THE   HOUR.  271 

negroes  had  the  right  to  vote,  and  in  most  of  the  States,  exercised 
the  right.     Washington,  and  Jefferson,  and  Jay,  and   Hancock, 
and  Hamilton,  every  year  went  up  to  the  polls  and  deposited  their 
ballots  where  the  negroes  did  theirs,  and  I  never  heard  that  they 
were  defiled,  or  that  the  Union  was  particularly  endangered.    They 
stood   up  for  the  equal  rights  of  all  free  men   at  the   ballot-box, 
without  respect  to  color.     And  after  the  War  of  the   Revolution 
was  over,  you  remember  that   they  had  to   go  to  work  to  recon- 
struct the  Union,  just  as  you  propose  to  go  to  work  to  reconstruct 
your  Union.     Under  the  old  Articles  of  Confederation  there  was 
no  bond  of  union  except  that  of  patriotic  sympathy,  and  the  dogma 
of  State  Rights  came  near  "  playing  the  devil  "  with  them.  Each 
State  could  do  as  it  pleased.     At  the  end  of  the  war  they  were 
compelled  to  go  to  work  and  make  "  a  more  perfect   Union,"  and 
in  this  work  of  making  a  better  Union   the   free  negroes   had  the 
right  to  vote  in  all  the  States  except  South  Carolina.     And  after- 
ward they  voted  under  Washington,  Adams,  Jefferson,  Madison, 
Monroe,  and  Jackson.     In  five  of  the   New  England  States,  and 
in   New  York,  they  have  been  voting  ever  since.     In   Pennsyl- 
vania they  continued  to  vote  until  1888  ;  in  Maryland  and  Vir- 
ginia they  voted  until  1832  or  1833  ;  in  New  Jersey  until  1839  or 
1840  ;  and  in  North  Carolina  and  Tennessee   until  1885.     Some 
of  my  North  Carolina  friends  here  will  remember  that  George  E. 
Badger  was  elected  to  Congress  by  negro  votes ;  John  Bell,  of  Ten- 
nessee, also  ;  and  old  Cave  Johnson,  on  one  occasion  finding  that 
he  was  about   to  lose  his    election,  emancipated  about  fifteen   or 
twenty  of  his  own  slaves,  and  they  went  up  to  the  polls  and  elected 
him  to  Congress.     Now  I  have  thought   that  as   the   negroes  are 
now  all  free  down  there,  we  might  extend  this  Democratic  prece- 
dent a  little  further.     Even  Andrew  Jackson,  old  Hickory  himself, 
—  who  was  a  good  Democrat  in  his  day,  though  he  would  not 
pass    muster  now,  —  the  old    hero  who  praised  the    negroes   for 
fighting  so  well  under  him  at  New  Orleans,  and  who  ever  after- 
wards enjoyed  their  gratitude  and  respect,  —  when  a  young  man, 
called    on  the  negroes   to  help  elect  the  legislature  which  after- 
wards  gave  him  a  seat  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States;   and 
I  think  if  old  Jackson  could  do  so  naughty  a.  thing  as  this  it  would 
not  disgrace  a  Copperhead  to  have  a  few  negroes  vote  for  him,  if 
they  were  so  crazy  as  to  vote  on  that  side  ! 

And  the  word  "white"  that  you  have  got  to  putting  into  your 
laws,  is  a  latter-day  device.  During  a  good  many  years  of  the 
nation's  life  this  word  was   not  in   your  laws  of  Congress,  terri- 


272  DANGERS   AND   DUTIES   OF   THE   HOUR. 

torial  bills,  nor  State  codes.  Washington  and  Jefferson,  I  am  sat- 
isfied, believed  as  I  do,  —  that  the  negro  himself  would  have  been 
born  white  if  he  had  been  consulted.  He  came  into  the  world 
under  the  best  possible  circumstances  he  knew  how  ;  and  they 
never  dreamed  of  the  ineffable  meanness  of  stripping  a  man  of  his 
political  rights  simply  on  account  of  the  color  of  his  skin.  It  was 
reserved  for  latter-day  Democrats,  —  the  horse-stealing,  slave- 
breeding  Democrats  of  a  comparatively  recent  period.  When  they 
got  hold  of  the  ropes  of  the  Republic  and  were  running  it  to  the 
devil,  and  the  Slave  Power  owned  us  all,  the  word  "  white  "  was 
incorporated  into  your  laws  ;  and  inasmuch  as  this  hatred  of  the 
negro  race  caused  slavery,  and  inasmuch  as  slavery,  which  caused 
the  war,  has  been  abolished,  at  great  cost  of  blood  and  money, 
would  it  not  be  a  good  idea,  some  of  these  days  when  you  have 
nothing  else  to  do — say  some  Sunday  afternoon  for  instance,  — 
for  you  all  to  sit  down  and  see  if  you  cannot  purge  your  hearts  of 
this  unchristian  and  unmanly  hatred  of  a  race  ?  I  merely  make 
the  suggestion  for  you  to  think  about.  But  the  point  I  wish  you  to 
keep  in  mind  is,  that  I  am  preaching  none  of  my  radicalism  at  all. 
If  you  would  give  the  ballot  to  the  negro  in  the  revolted  States  you 
would  be  simply  following  in  the  footsteps  of  the  framers  of  the 
government,  —  returning  to  that  old  policy,  the  abandonment  of 
which  has  brought  upon  us  all  the  desolation  of  war. 

But  I  would  give  the  ballot  to  the  negro  for  another  reason. 
We  called  upon  him  to  help  us,  and  he  has  helped  us.  We  tried 
with  all  our  might  to  save  the  Union,  and  to  save  slavery  with  it. 
We  had  got  it  into  our  heads  that  the  stars  of  our  flag  were  for 
the  whites,  and  the  stripes  for  the  blacks ;  that  there  was  some 
sort  of  Siamese  union  between  freedom  and  slavery,  rendering 
them  one  and  inseparable  ;  that  we  had  to  save  the  Union,  but 
that  we  must  also  save  slavery  with  it ;  and  our  partnership  with 
Satan  came  near  ruining  our  cause.  The  fact  is,  men  never  make 
bargains  with  the  devil  without  getting  cheated.  So  it  was  with 
us  ;  we  repudiated  the  divine  counsel  for  nearly  two  years  of  the 
war,  and  when  at  last  we  concluded  to  deal  justly,  —  when  the 
question  became  one  of  salvation  or  damnation  to  the  white  man  ; 
when  the  Union  was  about  to  perish  in  the  red  sea  of  war,  into 
which  our  guilt  and  folly  had  tumbled  it,  we  called  on  these 
wronged  people  to  help  us.  They  fought  side  by  side  with  our 
white  soldiers,  fighting  so  well  that  our  generals  praised  them  for 
their  bravery  and  endurance.  You  remember  that  Father  Abra- 
ham in  his  message  told  you  that  without  the  help  of  the  negro 


DANGERS   AND   DUTIES    OF   THE  HOUR.  273 

population  the  Union  wogld  have  perished  ;  he  frequently  said 
that  without  striking  at  slavery  and  arming  the  negroes,  foreign 
intervention  and  war  would  have  been  inevitable.  Has  it  never 
occurred  to  you,  when  denouncing  the  negro,  that  perhaps  the 
nation  lives  to-day,  and  did  not  perish,  because  of  those  black 
auxiliaries  you  called  into  the  service  ?  • 

In  traveling  over  the  country  I  frequently  hear  some  slimy, 
sneaking  Copperhead  saying,  "  Damn  the  nigger  !  "  when  not  more 
than  two  years  ago  that  same  Copperhead  might  have  been  seen 
perambulating  the  country,  hunting  up  a  negro  to  stand  between 
him  and  the  bullets  of  the  rebels,  and  save  his  cowardly  carcass 
from  hafm.  We  have  had  in  the  service  160,000  black  soldiers, 
and  they  enabled  that  many  white  men  to  stay  at  home  and  raise 
supplies  for  the  army.  The  Copperhead  hunted  his  black  substi- 
tute, found  him,  hired  him  to  go  ;  he  went,  fought  like  a  hero, 
rushed  into  every  ugly  gap  of  death  his  commander  told  him  to 
enter,  and  now,  on  his  safe  return,  the  Copperhead  looks  down 
upon  him  and  says,  "  Damn  the  nigger !  —  go  back  to  your  old 
master,  I  am  done  with  you  !  "  Is  this  a  specimen  of  your  mag- 
nanimity and  manhood  ? 

My  conservative  friends  say  to  me,  "  Is  it  not  strange  that  the 
soldiers  are  against  negro  suffrage  in  the  South  ?  "  Gentlemen, 
I  know  of  no  question  of  negro  suffrage  connected  with  our 
national  politics,  except  as  between  the  loyal  negro,  and  the  white 
rebels  of  the  South.  Now,  I  ask  you,  have  you  a  soldier  among 
you  who  hates  the  loyal  negro  who  fought  for  his  country  more 
than  he  hates  the  white  rebel  who  fought  against  it  ?  or  who,  if 
the  ballot  is  to  be  given  to  the  one  or  the  other,  would  give  it  to 
the  white  rebel  in  preference  ?  or  who,  if  the  ballot  is  to  be  given 
to  the  white  rebel,  would  not  cf^ckmate  him  by  giving  it  to  the 
loyal  negrO  at  his  side  ?  Have  you  any  civilian  among  you  who 
would  espouse  the  cause  of  the  white  rebel  in  the  cases  I  have 
supposed  ?  If  you  answer  these  questions  in  the  negative,  then 
you  are  with  me  on  the  question  of  negro  suffrage. 

Gentlemen,  when,  two  or  three  years  ago,  the  government  de- 
cided that  the  negro  was  fit  to  carry  a  gun  to  shoot  rebels  down, 
it  thereby  pledged  itself  irrevocably  to  give  him  the  ballot  to  vote 
rebels  down,  when  it  should  become  necessary.  And  the  nation 
never  can  go  behind  that  act.  If,  after  calling  on  the  negroes  to 
help  save  the  nation's  life,  it  could  hand  them  over  to  the  tender 
mercies  of  their  old  tyrants,  the  nation  would  deserve  to  perish  for 
its  wickedness ;  and  it  would.     So  heaven-daring  an  act  could  not 

18 


274  DANGERS   AXD   DUTIES   OF   THE    HOUR. 

be  perpetrated  in  this  land  without  J^ceiving  the  retribution  it 
would  merit.  Negro  suffrage  in  the  South  is  a  chapter  in  the  his- 
tory of  this  contest  as  sure  to  come  as  was  the  arming  of  the 
negro,  and  you  who  oppose  it  would  do  well  to  stand  out  of  the 
way,  for  it  will  sweep  over  you  as  remorselessly  as  would  the  tides 
of  the  sea. 

But  I  would  give  the  negro  the  ballot  for  another  reason.  Be- 
fore the  war  broke  out,  the  South,  on  the  basis  of  its  negro  popu- 
lation, had  eighteen  members  in  Congress.  Now  they  will  have 
twelve  additional  members,  or  thirty  in  all,  based  upon  a  population 
that  is  dumb.  Subtract  from  the  white  population  in  the  South 
those  that  have  been  killed  during  the  war,  and  that  lfcive  been 
disfranchised  since,  and  it  will  not  much  exceed  one  third  of  the 
whole  population  ;  that  is  to  say,  one  white  rebel  will  count  equal 
to  three  loyal  men.  I  always  thought  it  bad  enough  for  one  rebel 
to  count  equal  to  one  loyal  man,  but  when  you  establish  this  trinity 
in  unity  at  my  expense  I  must  kick  against  it. 

Let  me  refer  to  a  still  stronger  case.  According  to  the  census 
tables,  there  is  a  district  composed  of  six  counties  in  the  State  of 
Mississippi,  containing  a  population  of  a  hundred  thousand  people, 
three  fourths  of  whom  are  black.  If  these  negroes  are  disfran- 
chised, twenty-five  thousand  white  rebels  will  count  equal  to  the 
hundred  thousand  white  people  in  the  Fifth  District  of  Indiana. 
The  vote  of  one  Mississippi  rebel,  who  ought  to  have  been  hung 
before  to-day,  will  count  equal  to  the  votes  of  four  loyal  men  in 
my  district  —  four  soldiers  of  the  war,  who  have  fought  three 
years  in  the  country's  service.  Are  you  safe  under  the  operation 
of  a  provision  so  iniquitous  as  this  ?  It  not  only  disfranchises  the 
negro,  but  it  disfranchises  you.  If  one  rebel's  vote  can  equal  the 
votes  of  two  white  men,  it  disfranchises  in  effect  one  of  them.  It 
is  a  two-edged  sword  :  it  strikes  the  negro  in  one  direction,  and 
in  the  other  it  strikes  you. 

If  you  tolerate  this  principle,  if  you  don't  give  the  negro  the 
ballot,  another  consequence  will  come,  and  that  is  the  repudiation 
of  your  debt.  The  rebels  have  contracted  a  debt  of  some  two 
thousand  millions  of  dollars  in  trying  to  whip  us  ;  and  we  have  con- 
tracted a  debt  of  more  than  two  thousand  millions  of  dollars  in 
flogging  them.  If  you  hold  their  noses  to  the  grindstone,  as  you 
ought  to  do,  every  dollar  of  their  rebel  debt  is  gone,  and  you  will 
compel  them  to  help  pay  our  debt.  They  will  hate  that  confound- 
edly, and  will  agonize  day  and  night  to  find  some  way  of  escape  ; 
and  they  will  not  be  slow  in  finding  it.      They  are  as  unconverted 


DANGERS   AND   DUTIES   OF   THE   HOUR.  275 

to-day  as  ever,  as  I  have  proved  by  Parson  Brownlow.  They 
hunger  and  thirst  for  an  opportunity  to  join  hands  with  their  old 
allies  at  the  North ;  and  these  allies,  who  only  a  year  ago  got  up 
secret  Orders  to  murder  you  and  usurp  your  State  government  — 
most  of  you  know  them,  — are  ready  to  join  hands  with  their  old 
masters.  A  small  sum  of  money  will  buy  Copperheads  in  Con- 
gress enough  to  give  back  to  the  South  her  ancient  domination  in 
the  Union;  and  then  they  will  repudiate  our  debt,  and  saddle 
upon  your  shoulders  their  debt,  rendering  us  all  the  most  pitiful 
vagabonds  that  were  ever  turned  loose  upon  the  world. 

Now,  you  white  capitalists,  who  don't  love  the  negro,  but  do  love 
money,  whether  you  are  willing  that  this  state  of  things  shall  come 
about  or  not,  it  will  come,  unless  you  provide  against  it.  You  can 
save  the  country  from  this  financial  maelstrom  simply  by  dealing 
justly  with  the  negro. 

If  you  don't  give  the  ballot  to  the  loyal  negro,  and  do  give  it  to 
the  white  rebels,  these  latter,  hating  the  negro  to-day  more  than 
ever,  by  every  memory  of  their  humiliation,  will  make  laws  de- 
priving him  of  his  testimony  in  the  courts,  of  the  right  to  sue,  of 
the  right  to  own  or  hold  real  estate,  of  the  right  to  assemble  for 
deliberation  on  their  own  affairs ;  thus  making  him  sigh  for  the  old 
institution  of  slavery  as  an  alternative.  In  spite  of  all  constitu- 
tional amendments  that  can  be  adopted,  those  States  can  do  these 
things  if  only  white  men  with  rebel  hearts  are  permitted  to  vote. 
The  final  result  wTould  be,  that  the  millions  of  emancipated  blacks 
would  decline  to  be  made  slaves  again.  They  would  rise  up  in  an 
insurrection  such  as  the  world  perhaps  has  never  seen.  And  we 
would  be  liable  to  be  called  upon  to  go  down  and  cut  the  throats 
of  those  loyal  negroes  who  saved  the  nation's  life,  at  the  bidding 
of  rebels  who  plunged  the  country  into  war.  I  would  not  like  to 
be  invited  to  an  entertainment  of  that  sort,  nor  would  you.  If 
you  would  prevent  the  necessity  for  it,  unite  with  us  in  giving  the 
ballot  to  the  loyal  negro  in  the  South. 

I  would  give  the  negro  the  ballot  for  another  reason.  Taxation 
and  representation  ought,  on  principle,  to  go  together.  Our  fathers 
fought  for  that  -principle  seven  years.  Their  title  to  glory  and 
fame  rests  on  the  fact  that  they  successfully  denied  the  right  of 
England  to  make  laws  for  those  who  were  not  represented  in  the 
law-making  power.  Without  this  the  revolutionary  drama  would 
be  Hamlet  with  Samlet  omitted.  You  cannot  deny  the  democ- 
racy or  the  republicanism  of  that  principle,  and  you  cannot  de- 
cline to  extend  it  when  such  a  grand  opportunity  is  offered.     If 


276  DANGERS   AND   DUTIES    OF   THE   HOUR. 

you  may  disfranchise  four  millions  of  negroes  to-day,  you  may 
disfranchise  two  millions  of  Irishmen  to-morrow,  and  three  mill- 
ions of  Germans  the  next  day,  and  the  laboring  many,  the  "  filthy 
operatives,"  the  next.  You  will  soon  have  erected  on  the  ruins 
of  the  Republic  of  your  fathers  an  absolute  despotism  over  the 
whole  land.  It  is  policy  not  to  make  this  false  step.  Suppose  you 
were  to  make  a  law  disfranchising  all  the  Germans,  or  all  the 
Irish,  or  all  the  short  men,  or  all  the  tall  men  in  Indiana  ;  they 
would  give  you  a  hundred  times  more  trouble  than  if  you  were  to 
give  them  their  rights.  It  would  tax  all  the  cunning  of  your 
rulers  to  keep  them  down  and  preserve  peace.  Wherever  there 
is  a  downtrodden  race  clamoring  for  its  rights,  the  best  pos- 
sible thing  to  be  done  is  to  give  them  a  voice  in  the  government. 
They  will  then  feel,  even  if  things  don't  go  just  to  suit  them,  that 
their  grievances  are  self-imposed,  and  that  they  can  help  remove 
them  at  the  next  election.  Such  a  policy  will  make  every  man  a 
column  of  strength  in  support  of  the  public  edifice,  instead  of  an 
element  of  weakness  and  a  source  of  danger. 

I  would  give  the  negro  the  ballot  for  another  reason,  and  that 
is,  that  every  rebel  in  the  South,  and  every  Copperhead  in  the 
North  is  opposed  to  negro  suffrage.  If  there  were  no  other  argu- 
ment than  this  I  would  be  in  favor  of  negro  enfranchisement. 
When  you  know  a  man  to  be  in  sympathy  with,  and  doing  the 
works  of  the  devil,  have  you  any  doubt  as  to  whether  or  not  you 
are  on  the  Lord's  side  in  fighting  him  ?  And  when  you  hear  the 
rebels  of  the  South  and  Copperheads  of  the  North  denouncing 
negro  suffrage,  can't  you  swear  you  are  right  in  favoring  it,  with- 
out the  least  fear  of  a  mistake  in  your  oath  ? 

But  there  is  an  objection  to  the  proposition  to  which  I  wish  to 
call  your  attention.  It  is  said  that  the  negroes  are  unfit  to  vote  — 
that  they  are  too  ignorant ;  and  I  have  heard  it  said  that  they  need 
a  probation  of  ten  or  twenty  years  to  prepare  them  for  the  ballot ; 
that  they  must  have  time  to  acquire  property,  knowledge  of  polit- 
ical rights  and  duties,  and  then  it  will  do  to  give  them  the  ballot. 
I  don't  understand  that  argument.  When  you  commit  the  negro 
to  the  tender  mercies  of  his  old  tyrant,  who  proceeds  to  deny  him 
all  the  advantages  of  education,  the  accumulation  of  property,  and 
all  social  and  political  privileges,  how  soon  will  he  become  prepared 
for  the  ballot  ?  You  might  as  well  talk  about  preparing  a  man  to 
see  by  punching  out  his  eyes  ;  or  preparing  him  for  war  by  cutting 
oft  his  feet  and  hands  ;  or  preparing  the  lamb  for  security  by  com- 
mitting it  to  the  jaws  of  the  wolf.     If  you  want  to  prepare  the 


DANGERS  AND   DUTIES    OF   THE  WOUR.  277 

negro  for  suffrage  take  off  his  chains,  and  give  him  equal  advan- 
tages with  white  men  in  fighting  the  battle  of  life.  Don't  charge 
him  with  unfitness,  until  you  have  given  him  equal  opportunities 
with  others.  Gentlemen,  who  made  them  unfit?  I  think  it  was 
the  rebels.  They  enslaved  them,  degraded  them,  brutalized  them, 
made  them  what  they  are  ;  and  after  their  wickedness  has  brought 
on  this  war,  and  they  are  mastered,  and  the  question  of  restoring 
government  to  the  South  comes  up,  then  the  rebels  complain  of 
the  unfitness  of  the  negroes  to  vote  !  They  made  them  unfit,  and 
"  No  man,"  says  the  legal  maxim,  "  shall  take  advantage  of  his 
own  wrong."  Are  you  going  to  be  very  nice  or  fastidious  in 
selecting  a  man  to  vote  down  a  rebel  ?  Must  you  have  a  perfect 
gentleman  and  scholar  for  this  work  ?  I  think  the  negro  just  the 
man.  I  would  not  have  a  better,  if  I  could.  Of  all  men  he  is  the 
most  fit. 

The  rebel,  I  know,  won't  like  it.  It  will  hurt  him  to  make  his 
bed  on  negro  ballots.  He  will  get  mad  enough  to  explode,  almost. 
Shall  I  pour  out  my  tears  over  his  sorrows  ?  I  will  save  my  tears 
for  a  more  fit  occasion.  He  sowed  the  wind,  let  him  reap  the 
whirlwind.  He  is  the  architect  of  his  own  fortune  ;  let  him  enjoy 
it.  It  is  ordained  by  Providence  that  retribution  shall  follow 
wrong  doing.  Are  you  going  to  rush  between  the  rebel  and  the 
consequences  of  his  infernal  deeds  ?  Let  him  reap  as  he  has  sown. 
For  one,  I  have  too  much  to  do  to  vex  myself  about  how  he  will 
fare  under  negro  ballots.     I  am  sure  he  will  get  a]on<r  as  Well  as 

O  OCT 

he  deserves,  and  I  prefer  to  leave  the  whole  matter  with  the  negro, 
as  the  tables  are  at  last  turned  in  his  favor. 

But  what  is  fitness  to  vote  ?  It  is  a  relative  term.  Nobody  is 
perfectly  fit  to  vote.  I  have  never  seen  a  man  that  was.  A  man 
would  have  to  know  all  about  constitutional  law,  the  difference  be- 
tween State  Rights  and  National  Sovereignty,  all  about  political 
economy,  all  about  the  duties  of  the  citizen,  all  about  a  thousand 
things  as  to  which  wise  men  differ.  He  would  have  to  be  an  angel, 
or  a  god.  If  you  will  find  such  a  man,  I  will  set  him  to  voting. 
He  will  see.  exactly  into  the  right  and  wrong  of  every  question ; 
he  will  be  a  good  deal  more  infallible  than  the  Pope.  But  nobody 
I  have  seen  fills  that  bill.  We  are  all  more  or  less  unfit  to  vote, 
and  to  discharge  all  our  duties.  That  is  all  you  can  say  about  it, 
and  if  you  were  going  to  get  up  a  scale  of  knowledge  and  virtue 
from  zero  up  to  one  hundred,  I  would  be  totally  at  a  loss  to  find 
the  point  of  demarcation  below  which  nobody  should  vote,  and 
above  which  everybody  might  vote.     I  would  have  to  make  a  slid- 


278  DANGERS   AND   DUTIES   OF   THE   HOUR. 

ino-  scale  at  first,  and  then  I  would  probably  throw  it  away  and 
let  every  man  vote  who  was  loyal  and  of  proper  age.  The  truth 
is,  fitness  belongs  not  so  much  to  individual  men,  as  to  aggregate 
manhood.  Who  was  it  that  saved  your  country  during  this  war  ? 
Was  it  the  wisdom  of  your  President,  of  his  Cabinet,  or  of  Con- 
gress, or  of  our  great  statesmen?  Why,  they  all  blundered,  and 
you  know  how  often,  all  the  way  through.  You  furnished  the 
government  with  the  men,  and  the  money,  and  the  brains.  It 
was  your  aggregate,  practical,  common  sense  that  inspired  your 
rulers  at  Washington  with  the  policy  which  saved  us.  It  is  the 
people  of  the  United  States  who  are  the  saviors  of  the  Union. 
Somebody  has  said  that  the  English  Parliament  is  wiser  than  any 
man  in  Parliament.  Your  Congress  is  wiser  than  any  man  in 
Congress  ;  the  nation  is  wiser  than  any  select  few  in  it,  who 
might  be  presumed  to  know  it  all,  and  who  would  "  run  the 
machine  into  the  ground  "  so  quick  that  you  would  be  glad  to  get 
back  to  a  government  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for  the  peo- 
ple.    As  your  poet  Longfellow  has  said,  — 

"  It  is  the  heart,  and  not  the  brain, 
That  to  the  highest  doth  attain." 

Show  me  a  man  whose  heart  is  right,  and  he  will  do  to  trust 
all  the  time.  The  negro's  heart  has  been  right  all  through  this 
war  ;  true  as  the  needle  to  the  pole.  He  never  betrayed  a  trust ; 
always  knew  the  difference  between  a  gray  coat  and  a  blue  one  ; 
always  knew  the  difference  between  treason  and  loyalty ;  and  that 
is  more  than  Jeff  Davis  has  found  out  to  this  day,  with  all  his 
knowledge. 

It  is  true,  the  negroes  cannot  read  or  write  much  ;  perhaps  not 
one  in  forty  or  fifty  of  the  field  hands  can  read  or  write.  The 
same,  if  not  more,  is  true  of  the  "  white  trash."  When  you  talk 
about  disfranchising  the  negro  because  he  can't  read  or  write,  you 
ought  to  apply  your  philosophy  elsewhere.  You  have  half  a  million 
white  men  in  the  Union  marching  up  to  the  ballot-box  every  year 
who  cannot  write  their  own  names.  I  believe  that  one  ninth  of 
the  adult  people  in  Indiana  can  neither  read  nor  write.  You  don't 
propose  to  disfranchise  them.  The  best  educated  country  in  the 
world  is  Prussia  ;  everybody  there  is  educated  ;  and  yet  in  Prus- 
sia, where  you  would  suppose  education  had  made  free  institutions, 
nobody  votes,  and  the  government  is  despotic.  Education  is  not 
freedom.  It  does  not,  necessarily,  fit  any  man  in  the  world  to  vote. 
If  it  did,  you  ought  to  set  Jeff  Davis  and  the  rebel  leaders  to 
voting  every  day,  and  disfranchise  both  white  and  black  who  can- 


DANGERS   AND   DUTIES   OF   THE   HOUR.  279 

not  read  and  write.  But  if  you  did  you  would  soon  have  another 
war  on  your  hands.  The  test  will  not  do.  I  recently  wrote  a 
letter  to  a  Friend,  waited  for  an  answer,  but  didn't  receive  any. 
After  a  couple  of  weeks  he  came  to  me  with  the  letter,  saying,  "  I 
wish  thee  would  read  thy  letter.  I  can't  make  it  out.  Thee 
can't  write."  The  fact  is,  I  never  could  write  very  well,  and  the 
rule  would  disfranchise  me,  perhaps.  Yet  I  might  be  perfectly  fit 
to  vote,  and  you  might  be  able  to  write  very  neatly,  a  hand  per- 
fectly lovely  to  the  eye,  and  yet  be  a  miserable  Copperhead, 
wholly  unfit  for  the  ballot.  Reading  and  writing  are  purely  me- 
chanical operations. 

My  friends,  the  true  way  to  fit  men  for  voting  is  to  put  the  bal- 
lot into  their  hands.  That  's  the  way  to  get  at  it.  Suppose  you 
want  to  teach  your  boy  how  to  swim,  and  you  won't  let  him  go 
into  the  water  for  fear  of  drowning;  he  must  stand  on  the  land 
and  go-  through  the  motions.  How  long,  on  a  reasonable  calcula- 
tion,  would  it  take  to  teach  him  to  swim  ?  You  want  to  teach 
these  ignorant  whites  and  stupid  negroes  how  to  vote.  The  first 
thing  you  have  to  do  is  to  put  the  ballot  into  their  hands.  How 
can  a  man  vote  without  a  ballot?  How  can  he  cast  a  ballot 
if  no  man  gives  it  to  him  ?  Give  the  ballot,  and  the  negroes  will 
say  to  themselves,  "  Now  we  are  invested  with  power  in  the  gov- 
ernment ;  we  have  a  voice  in  deciding  these  great  questions  ; 
we  must  read  the  newspapers,  and  inquire  of  our  neighbors  who 
know  more  than  we  do."  In  this  way  they  will  learn  something 
about  politics,  and  how  to  vote  intelligently.  This  is  the  true 
Democratic  idea  ;  and  until  this  negro  question  came  up  there 
never  has  been  any  test  of  fitness  suggested,  except  that  of  age 
and  sex.  No  precise  standard  of  knowledge  or  virtue  has  ever 
been  hinted  at  by  the  Democratic  party  or  anybody  else,  till  the 
Know  Nothing  movement  afflicted  our  politics. 

Sir,  I  believe  in  the  fitness  of  the  people  to  govern  ;  and  if  you 
were  to  present  to  me  the  alternative  of  disfranchising  a  half 
million  of  our  people,  or  of  giving  the  ballot  to  a  half  million  who 
have  it  not,  I  would  give  the  ballot.  In  the  one  case  I  would 
open  a  vein  that  might  bleed  the  Republic  to  death ;  in"'  the  other, 
I  would  multiply  the  sources  of  public  safety.  I  believe,  relig- 
iously, in  Democracy ;  in  the  fitness  of  the  whole  people  to  take 
care  of  the  welfare  of  the  whole  people  ;  and  while  I  would  urge 
universal  education,  I  would  urge  universal  suffrage. 

But  I  am  told  that  the  negroes  will  vote  as  their  masters  want 
them  to.     Do  you  believe  it?    Suppose  they  would,  nobody  would 


280  DANGERS  AND   DUTIES   OF  THE   HOUR. 

be  badly  hurt ;  the  matter  would  be  no  worse,  for  they  all  vote 
now  through  their  old  masters.  But  if  half  of  them  should  vote 
the  Abolition  ticket,  then  half  the  rebel  power  would  be  de- 
stroyed;  if  three  fourths  of  them,  then  three  fourths  of  their  power 
would  be  gone.  But  would  they  vote  with  their  old  masters? 
They  didn't  fight  with  their  old  masters.  You  said  if  we  put  arms 
into  their  hands  they  would  shoot  at  us.  They  have  never  shot 
in  the  wrong  direction  yet.  They  knew  exactly  how  to  point 
their  guns  and  bayonets  ;  and  if  they  had  brains  enough  to  know 
that,  how  could  it  happen  that  they  would  become,  all  at  once,  so 
oblivious  as  not  to  know  how  to  cast  a  ballot  as  well  as  a  bullet  ? 
Did  you  ever  know  an  Irishman  so  stupid  as  to  vote  the  Know 
Nothing  ticket  ?  You  may  take  the  lowest  specimen  having  the 
animal  figure  of  a  man,  and  you  cannot  make  him  vote  anything 
but  the  DimocYaXxc  ticket.  I  believe  it  is  possible  the  negroes 
might  be  persuaded  to  vote  the  Abolition  ticket,  considering  the 
way  they  have  been  fighting.  Why,  every  South  Carolinian 
Avould  be  preaching  negro  suffrage  with  me  to-night,  if  he  thought 
the  negroes  would  vote  as  he  wanted  them  to.  Doubtless  they 
would  sometimes  vote  wrong.  When  I  remember  that  the  slave- 
holders have  been  sharp  enough  to  make  fools  of  our  wise  men, 
have  taken  our  great  statesmen  and  molded  them  and  licked  them 
into  the  shape  they  wanted  them,  I  admit  that  some  of  these  stu- 
pid negroes  might  be  induced  to  vote  their  old  masters'  ticket. 
But  would  that  be  the  first  time  men  have  voted  wrong  ?  In  my 
political  experience  I  have  absolutely  seen  white  men  vote  on  the 
wrong  side  !  Haven't  you  ?  I  understand  that  even  Democrats 
have  voted  wrong.  To  tell  the  whole  truth,  I  believe  it  was 
Democratic  voting,  under  the  party  la-sh,  and  in  the  interest  of  an 
institution  alien  to  your  welfare,  bad,  devilish,  white  voting,  that 
voted  this  country  to  the  gates  of  death,  by  plunging  it  into  this 
war.  Why,  the  Copperheads  are  the  last  men  in  the  world  to 
reproach  the  negro  with  being  unfit  to  vote.  If  the  government 
should  last  a  million  years,  no  possible  result  of  negro  voting  could 
be  much  worse  than  this  result  of  Democratic  voting  for  the  last 
twenty  years.  I  have  known  Republicans  to  vote  wrong  ;  Aboli- 
tionists, Free-soilers.  I  have  voted  wrong  several  times  myself, 
and  I  am  sorry  for  it.  We  all  make  mistakes,  and  we  may  all 
profit  by  our  blunders.  Could  not  the  negro  profit  by  his  expe- 
rience as  well  ? 

But  it  is  said  there  is  a  way  of  avoiding  this  negro  question  by 
an  amendment  of  the  Constitution  limiting  representation  in  Con- 


DANGERS   AND  DUTIES    OF   THE   HOUR.  281 

gress  to  suffrage  ;  and  then  the  rebels,  in  order  to  get  back  their 
power,  will  themselves  give  the  ballot  to  the  negroes.  This  has 
been  preached  by  respectable  men  and  newspapers  all  over  the 
country,  and  it  has  deluded  more  men  than  any  sophism  I  have 
encountered  this  year.  You  cannot,  in  President  Johnson's  opin- 
ion, amend  the  Constitution  without  three  fourths  of  the  States 
concurring,  and  these  eleven  rebel  States,  being  more  than  one 
fourth,  would  not  concur.  And  if  you  could  thus  amend  the  Con- 
stitution, it  would  take  three  or  four  years  to  accomplish  it.  But 
this  question  of  suffrage  and  reconstruction  is  upon  us,  and  will  not 
wait.  It  meets  us  in  December.  Besides,  the  late  slaveholders 
would  as  soon  rush  into  a  fiery  furnace  as  to  give  the  ballot  to  the 
colored  people.  The  leading  men  among  them  declare  they  would 
rather  die  than  do  it.  It  would  be  to  Yankeeize  and  abolitionize 
the  whole  South.  True,  it  would  give  back  to  the  section  her  thirty 
voices  in  Congress,*but  they  would  be  sent  there  by  the  Yankees 
and  negroes  and  abolitionists,  who  would  see  the  old  slave  dynasty 
in  "  kingdom  come  "  before  they  would  see  it  restored.  The  whole 
idea  is  pure  practical  nonsense.  The  slaveholders  could  always 
have  increased  their  power  in  Congress  by  simply  giving  freedom 
to  their  slaves ;  but  they  loved  their  domination  over  the  negro 
more  than  they  loved  political  power,  and  even  plunged  the  coun- 
try into  war  in  order  to  eternize  their  institution.  The  amend- 
ment to  the  Constitution,  as  proposed,  would  be  proper,  and  I  shall 
vote  for  it ;  but  I  would  rather  extend  suffrage  to  representation, 
than  reduce  representation  to  suffrage.  The  latter,  as  a  solution 
of  the  suffrage  question,  is  utterly  futile.  It  is  simply  an  attempt 
to  shuffle  from  our  own  shoulders  a  plain  duty,  and  saddle  it  on  to 
the  rebels  who  never  would  perform  it. 

But  it  is  said  that  if  we  give  the  negroes  the  ballot  in  the  South, 
we  will  have  to  give  it  to  those  in  Indiana.  Gentlemen,  if  Indiana 
had  gone  out  of  the  Union,  and  we,  in  trying  to  whip  her  back, 
had  been  compelled  to  call  upon  the  negroes  to  help  us,  and  when 
we  had  whipped  her  into  the  Union  we  had  not  been  strong 
enough  to  hold  her  there  without  the  ballots  of  the  negroes,  you 
would  have  the  case  I  am  arguing  as  to  the  South.  But  if  you 
secure  equal  rights  and  equal  advantages  to  the  negro,  in  the 
reconstruction  of  the  South,  under  this  inducement  to  our  colored 
people  to  return  to  their  sunny  home,  the  question  of  negro  suf- 
frage might  never  come  in  Indiana.  If  it  should  come,  I  will  be 
in  favor  of  taking  it  up  and  dealing  with  it  upon  its  merits.  I  am 
for  taxation  and  representation,  everywhere  throughout  our  coun- 


282      DANGERS  AND  DUTIES  OF  THE  HOUR. 

try.  But  this  question  belongs  to  you,  gentlemen  of  the  Legis- 
lature, and  Congress  cannot  touch  it.  Let  me  beg  of  you  not  to 
confound  together  very  different  questions.  I  confess  and  deplore 
the  conduct  of  Indiana  toward  her  colored  people  ;  but  if  our  Black 
Laws  were  a  thousand  times  blacker,  it  would  be  none  the  less  my 
duty  to  the  nation  to  plead  for  negro  suffrage  in  the  South.  I  do 
so  not  exclusively  on  the  ground  of  humanity,  or  of  justice  to  the 
negro,  but  on  the  more  immediately  imperative  ground  of  na- 
tional salvation.  I  feel  sure  that  the  country  cannot  be  saved, 
and  the  fruits  of  our  victory  garnered,  if  the  governing  power  in 
the  South  be  committed  to  the  hands  of  the  rebels.  Let  us  settle 
this  great  national  question,  and  then  we  shall  be  better  prepared 
for  minor  ones.  My  conservative  friends  are  grieved  because  I  do 
not  demand  immediate  negro  suffrage  in  Indiana  as  my  "  one 
idea."  I  am  always  glad  to  please  these  friends,  and  I  am  natu- 
rally amiable,  but  I  must  beg  leave  in  this  case  to  decline  acceding 
to  their  wishes. 

Gentlemen,  another  objection  I  have  heard  to  negro  suffrage  is 
that  they  will  hold  all  the  offices  in  the  South  ;  that  the  whites 
there  will  leave,  and  we  shall  no  longer  migrate  there  ;  that  that 
region  will  grow  blacker  and  blacker,  electing:  negro  iudges,  negro 
governors,  negro  congressmen,  etc.,  till  the  finale  will  be  a  war  of 
races.  This,  I  confess,  is  a  dark  picture.  I  cannot,  however,  feel 
alarmed.  We  Radicals,  dangerous  as  we  are  supposed  to  be,  will 
guard  against  these  frightful  results.  What  we  deprecate  is  haste 
in  reconstruction.  We  have  no  thought,  for  example,  of  hurry- 
ing South  Carolina  into  the  Union  with  her  ignorant  negroes,  and 
stupid  and  disloyal  whites.  We  want  a  season  of  probation,  giv- 
ing us  time  to.repeople  the  waste  places  within  her  borders;  time 
for  Yankees  and  Europeans  to  take  possession  of  the  country  and 
supply  us  with  a  loyal  and  intelligent  element.  Then  there  will 
be  no  negroes  holding  office  unless  a  majority  of  the  people  want 
them,  and  in  that  case  a  war  of  races  will  not  be  very  probable. 
I  have  already  referred  to  the  policy  of  negro  voting  in  nearly  all 
of  the  States  for  some  thirty  or  forty  years  of  our  history,  and  I 
believe  it  never  led  to  negro  office-holding.  Even  in  Massachu- 
setts I  remember  no  case  of  the  sort.  The  only  instance  in  my 
knowledge  occurred  in  this  State,  some  twenty  years  ago,  in  the 
election  of  a  negro  justice  of  the  peace.  Nor  has  negro  voting 
ever  led  to  social  equality  or  miscegenation,  to  my  knowledge. 
If  my  Democratic  friends,  however,  feel  in  danger  of  marrying 
negro  women,  I  am  in  favor  of  a  law  for  their  protection.     I  be- 


DANGERS   AND   DUTIES   OF   THE   HOUR.  283 

lieve  the  Republicans  do  not  feel  in  any  sort  of  clanger.  Gentle- 
men, seriously,  the  argument  I  am  combating  is  worthy  only  of 
our  Copperhead  friends,  and  I  hope  no  loyal  man  will  ever  here- 
after defile  himself  by  wielding  their  despicable  weapons. 

But  it  is  said,  after  all,  that  the  true  policy  is  not  to  give  the 
ballot  to  the  negro,  but  to  colonize  him  !  Gentlemen,  I  trust  I  need 
not  occupy  your  timewith  any  argument  on  this  point.  Certainly, 
the  policy  of  colonization  in  any  foreign  clime  has  found  its  place 
among  the  exploded  humbugs  of  the  age.  Perhaps  I  should  not 
wholly  overlook  the  fact  that  General  Cox,  of  Ohio,  has  invented 
a  new,  and  what  he  doubtless  believes  an  improved  plan  of  coloni- 
zation, for  which,  I  presume,  he  means  to  take  out  a  patent.  He 
proposes  to  confine  all  the  freedmen  in  some  three  or  four  States 
of  the  South,  and  hold  them  there  as  a  dependency  under  the 
National  Government,  — a  sort  of  African  Reservation.  How  he 
would  get  the  two  or  three  hundred  thousand  white  people  in  those 
States  out,  having  the  right  of  locomotion  and  domicile,  or  how  he 
would  get  the  negroes  in,  having  the  same  right,  he  has  not  told 
us.  But  if  the  whites  were  all  out  and  the  negroes  all  in,  the  real 
problem  would  still  remain  to  be  solved.  Four  millions  of  negroes 
huddled  together,  surrounded  at  every  point  of  their  border  by  a 
negro-hating,  domineering  white  race,  would  furnish  the  world 
with  a  repetition,  on  a  large  scale,  of  those  scenes  of  strife,  border 
warfare,  expulsion  and  extermination,  which  we  have  seen  enacted 
in  the  case  of  our  Seminole  and  Cherokee  reservations.  I  need 
not  dwell  on  this  most  impracticable  of  all  projects,  for  by  common 
consent  it  is  rapidly  passing  out  of  the  thoughts  of  men  as  utterly 
unworthy  of  consideration. 

There  is  another  method  of  evading  the  question  of  negro  suf- 
frage which  I  sometimes  hear  urged,  and  that  is  the  establishment 
of  a  military  government  over  the  districts  lately  in  revolt.  The 
poor  whites,  it  is  said,  are  too  ignorant  to  vote  ;  the  negroes  are  in 
the  same  condition  ;  the  rebel  leaders  are  or  should  be  disfran- 
chised ;  let  us,  therefore,  get  up  a  military  government,  and  let 
nobody  vote.  Gentlemen,  I  object  to  this  policy,  —  first,  that  a 
great  standing  army  in  time  of  peace  is  at  war  with  all  the  max- 
ims of  our  fathers  ;  next,  that  it  would  cost  us  from  one  hundred 
to  two  hundred  millions  per  year  to  maintain  it,  and  you  could 
not  raise  the  money,  having  already  a  financial  burden  fully  suffi- 
cient for  your  shoulders  ;  and  finally,  that  a  military  government 
never  would  fit  anybody  to  vote.  Like  the  despotisms  of  the  Old 
World,  it  would  unman,  and  dwarf,,  and  paraljze  the  people,  ren- 


284  DANGERS   AND   DUTIES   OF   THE   HOUR. 

dering  them  more  and  more  the  mere  helpless  machines  of  the 
power  that  would  use  them.  In  fact  the  proposition  logically  con- 
templates the  abolition  of  free  institutions  in  all  the  insurrec- 
tionary districts,  and  is  therefore  utterly  vicious.  As  I  have  ar- 
gued elsewhere,  the  way  to  teach  men  the  use  of  the  ballot  is  to 
give  it  to  them,  and  the  sooner  you  send  them  to  school  the  sooner 
they  will  learn. 

Another  objection  to  negro  suffrage  is  that  the  agitation  of  the 
question  will  divide  the  Union  party  and  aid  our  enemy.  "  Don't 
spring  it !  "  say  my  conservative  friends ;  "  for  God's  sake  don't 
spring  it !  It  will  divide  us  and  let  the  Copperheads  of  our  State 
into  power  !  "  Well,  gentlemen,  I  didn't  spring  it.  The  rebels 
sprung  it,  when  they  brought  on  the  war  and  necessitated  its  issues. 
The  government  sprang  it  when  it  put  arms  into  the  hands  of  the 
negro.  The  Copperheads  spring  it,  and  put  it  into  their  platforms. 
My  conservative  friends  spring  it  by  imploring  me  not  to  spring  it. 
So  the  question  is  sprung.  What  will  you  do  about  it  ?  "  It  will 
let  in  the  Copperheads  !  "  Suppose  it  should  ;  would  that  be  any 
worse  than  letting  in  the  rebels  ?  If  we  are  to  bring  ourselves 
down  to  the  level  of  the  Copperheads  in  order  to  succeed,  meanly 
consenting  to  do  their  work,  we  may  as  well  let  them  in  regularly, 
at  once.  If  the  Union  party  can  only  be  held  together  by  tram- 
pling upon  justice  and  the  rights  of  man,  the  sooner  we  go  to 
pieces  the  better.  "  Don't  agitate  it !  Keep  still !  "  And  so  my 
conservative  friends  plead  with  me  seventeen  years  ago.  Their 
gospel  was  Hush!  And  as  the  slaves  were  in  chains,  if  everybody 
would  hush  they  would  remain  in  chains,  world  without  end.  The 
same  is  true  now  of  negro  suffrage.  Agitation  is  the  chosen  means 
under  Providence  of  carrying  forward  the  truth,  and  the  man  who 
opposes  it  now  is  not  for  suffrage  at  any  time.  "  Be  still ;  wait 
till  the  country  is  ready  for  it !  "  But  Providence  has  pretty 
much  quit  working  miracles.  Suppose  He  should  send  his  light- 
ning, as  He  did  in  the  conversion  of  Paul,  and  instantly  convert  us 
all  to  negro  suffrage.  Then  I  suppose  I  would  have  leave  to  agi- 
tate it.  But  the  first  Conservative  I  would  meet  would  say,  "  You 
are  a  fool !  What  are  you  talking  about?  We  are  all  with  you !  " 
Gentlemen,  you  see  the  miserable  sophistry  into  which  men  run 
in  striving  to  escape  a  disagreeable  duty.  I  say  to  you  to-night, 
the  issue  will  not  divide  us.  The  heavens  will  not  fall,  if  justice 
is  done.  All  through  the  war  we  disagreed  as  to  arming  the 
negroes,  striking  at  slavery,  and  the  confiscation  of  rebel  prop- 
erty, but  we  so  hated  the  rebels  that  we  kept  our  eye  on  their 


DANGERS   AND   DUTIES   OF   THE   HOUR.  285 

guns,  looking  neither  to  the  right  nor  to  the  left.  So  it  will  be 
now.  If  any  Union  man  should  leave  us  on  this  issue,  and  join 
the  enemy,  he  will  very  soon  grow  ashamed  of  his  crowd  and  re- 
turn ;  and  on  a  decent  probation  I  would  take  him  back.  We  shall 
not  divide.  This  is  my  prophecy,  and  I  prophesy  further  that  in 
less  than  twelve  months  some  of  the  men  who  now  beg  me  not  to 
spring  the  question  will  swear  they  sprung  it  first.  I  form  this 
opinion  from  my  political  experience. 

And  now,  gentlemen,  in  conclusion,  I  come  to  the  most  for- 
midable objection  of  all,  in  the  opinion  of  those  who  urge  it, 
namely,  that  the  question  belongs  to  the  States  ;  that  Indiana  can 
decide  for  herself  who  shall  vote  ;  Ohio  can  ;  Mississippi  can  ;  the 
eleven  revolted  States,  being  all  of  them  in  the  Union,  can  deter- 
mine for  themselves  exclusively  who  shall  vote  ;  and  that,  there- 
fore, you  and  I  have  no  concern  in  the  matter.  I  bespeak  your 
special  attention  to  what  I  have  to  say,  for  I  flatter  myself  I  can 
make  my  views  perfectly  intelligible,  even  to  my  friend  Captain 
Kilgore,  who  filed  his  bill  of  discovery  against  me. 

I  agree,  gentlemen,  that  the  question  belongs  to  the  States,  sub- 
ject to  the  reserved  right  and  duty  of  the  United  States  to  guar- 
antee Republican  governments  to  the  States.  The  States  might  so 
deal  with  the  right  of  suffrage  as  to  invoke  national  intervention  ; 
but  I  agree  to  the  generally  accepted  proposition,  that  it  is  a  State 
question.  I  agree  further,  that  the  revolted  districts  are  in  the 
Union,  in  one  sense.  Their  territory  is  there.  I  have  not  heard 
of  its  removal  by  the  rebels,  or  by  earthquake  or  other  convulsion 
of  nature.  I  agree,  too,  that  the  people  occupying  that  territory 
are  in  the  Union.  They  are  not  the  citizens  of  any  foreign  coun- 
try. They  are  subject  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  United  States, 
and  can  no  more  run  away  from  it  than  a  man  can  run  away  from 
his  shadow.  Through  their  treason  they  have  lost  their  rights  in 
the  Union,  but  the  Union  has  lost  none  of  its  authority  over  them. 
I  agree  further  that  no  State  can  constitutional! y  secede.  Our 
fathers  never  intended  that  the  government  might  fall  to  pieces  at 
the  will  or  whim  of  any  of  its  parts.  All  governments  are  in- 
tended to  be  perpetual.  No  State,  therefore,  can  constitutionally 
secede,  any  more  than  any  one  of  you  can  morally  tell  a  lie,  or 
commit  suicide.  If,  however,  you  do  lie,  and  we  can  prove  it,  the 
lie  is  out,  though  you  did  it  immorally  ;  and  if  you  cut  your  throat, 
and  the  breath  goes  out  of  your  body,  I  rather  think  you  will  be 
dead,  seceded  to  another  world,  though  you  will  not  have  gone 
there  according  to  either  law  or  gospel.     Some  of  you  may  have  a 


286  DANGERS   AND  DUTIES   OF   THE   HOUR. 

theory  that  you  would  not  be  dead  in  the  case  supposed,  but  I 
speak  of  the  fact.  Your  theory  that  two  and  three  make  four 
would  not  change  the  fact  of  their  sum.  The  truth  of  the  matter 
was  well  stated  by  President  Lincoln,  when  he  said  that  the  rebel 
States  are  outside  of  their  proper  constitutional  relations  to  the 
Union.  They  are,  so  to  speak,  outside  of  that  constitutional  orbit 
in  which  they  once  revolved  around  the  Union,  as  their  centre  and 
sun  ;  and  until  restored,  they  can  no  more  be  States  in  the  Union 
than  a  branch  can  live  when  severed  from  the  tree.  Toward  the 
National  Government  they  stand  in  the  relation  of  Territories,  and 
are  subject  entirely  to  its  jurisdiction. 

My  first  witness  on  this  subject  is  President  Johnson.  He  ap- 
points provisional  governors  for  these  States  ;  but  the  Constitu- 
tion knows  nothing  of  any  such  officer,  and  he  certainly  has  no 
right  to  appoint  a  governor  of  any  sort  for  any  State  in  the 
Union.  North  Carolina  has  just  elected  a  rebel  governor,  over 
Holden,  and  asks  to  be  recognized  at  once  as  a  State.  The  Presi- 
dent tells  her  to  reconstruct  awhile  first,  and  instructs  Holden  to 
hold  on.  Louisiana  last  year  made  a  Constitution,  elected  a  gov- 
ernor, and  sent  senators  and  representatives  to  Washington.  Al- 
most everybody  said  she  was  in.  It  was  argued  she  had  never 
been  out,  because  the  Constitution  would  not  let  her  go  out.  But 
Congress  looked  at  these  senators  and  representatives,  and  told 
them  they  were  "  not  good  looking  and  couldn't  come  in."  I  be- 
lieve  the  State  of  Louisiana  is  now  under  a  military  governor. 
The  President  tells  the  rebels  they  must  abolish  slavery,  repudiate 
their  debt,  give  the  negroes  their  testimony,  etc.,  none  of  which 
conditions  he  can  lawfully  exact,  if  the  States  are  in  the  Union,  as 
are  Indiana  and  Ohio.  He  pardons  a  rebel  leader  into  a  voter  ; 
but  if  he  can  make  voters  out  of  rebel  leaders,  can't  he  make 
voters  of  loyal  men  ?  And  if  in  any  one  of  these  States  he 
deals  with  the  question  of  suffrage,  is  that  State  in  the  Union  ?  He 
tells  the  rebels  that  certain  of  them  shall  not  vote  ;  but  does 
not  the  right  to  say  who  shall  not  vote,  imply  the  right  to  say 
who  shall  ?  The  President  tells  the  rebels  to  organize  govern- 
ments,  elect  members  of  Congress,  and  then  submit  to  Congress 
the  question  of  their  restoration.  But  could  he  do  that  as  to  In- 
diana ?  If  we  should  make  a  new  constitution  to-day,  would  it 
be  any  of  the  business  of  Congress  ?  Certainly  we  should  not 
submit  to  any  question  as  to  the  admission  of  duly  elected  mem- 
bers under  the  new  organic  law. 

Some   of  our  party  leaders  say  that  the  acts  of  the  Executive 


DANGERS   AND   DUTIES   OF   THE   HOUR.  287 

and  of  Congress  since  the  war  have  proceeded  upon  the  hypothe- 
sis that  all  these  States  are  in  ;  that  once  in  the  Union,  always  in 
the  Union.  To  show  the  fallacy  of  this,  let  me  instance  another 
fact.  In  the  House  of  Representatives  there  are  236  members, 
counting  the  States  in  revolt.  A  constitutional  quorum  is  119,  if  I 
am  not  mistaken.  But  ever  since  the  war  we  have  been  legislating 
with  a  quorum  of  94,  being  a  majority  of  the  representatives  from 
the  States  that  have  not  rebelled.  It  follows  from  the  theory  I  am 
opposing  that  our  tax  laws,  our  conscription  laws,  —  our  thousand 
and  one  laws  on  which  I  have  been  voting  for  four  \ears, —  are 
null  and  void.  You  have  pretended  to  fight  rebels,  while  all  the 
time  you  yourselves  were  trampling  the  Constitution  under  foot. 
Your  bonds  and  greenbacks  have  no  value.  Your  constitutional 
amendment,  soon  now  to  be  consummated,  will  have  no  validity, 
for  not  two  thirds  of  Congress  ever  voted  for  its  submission.  Do 
you  believe  all  this?  Gentlemen,  you  know  better.  You  dare 
not  say  it,  nor  can  the  Nation.  As  I  have  already  said,  these  rebel 
States  are  outside  of  their  constitutional  orbit,  and  they  never  can 
get  back  into  it  without  the  consent  of  Congress.  And  right  here 
is  where  the  matter  of  suffrage  comes  under  your  jurisdiction. 
Carolina,  for  example,  asks  admission.  She  must  come  as  a  Terri- 
tory, as  to  her  rights.  Suppose  she  asks  to  be  restored  with  slav- 
ery in  her  Constitution.  I  would  see  her  in  Paradise  before  I 
would  vote  to  receive  her.  Suppose  she  should  ask  to  come  in 
with  polygamy.  Believing  one  wife  about  as  many  as  one  Chris- 
tian can  get  along  with,  I  would  not  receive  her.  Suppose  she 
should  come  with  cannibalism,  the  right  of  one  Copperhead  to  eat 
another,  —  a  thing  not  very  offensive  in  itself, — I  would  not  vote 
for  a  man-eating  constitution,  for  loyal  men  might  be  the  victims. 
Carolina  ahks  to  come  in,  and  while  I  am  thinking  of  the  question 
I  remember  a  clause  in  the  Constitution  which  says,  "  The  United 
States  shall  guarantee  to  every  State  a  republican  form  of  govern- 
ment." What  is  a  republican  form  of  government,  is  a  political 
question  exclusively  for  Congress  to  decide.  Well,  I  look  at  her 
Constitution,  and  find  that  it  disfranchises  two  thirds  of  her  people, 
and  they  the  only  loyal  ones  in  her  border,  and  gives  the  ballot  to 
one  third,  and  they  rebels,  who  ought  to  have  been  hung  or  exiled 
before  to-day.  Gentlemen,  I  would  decide,  without  hesitation,  that 
her  Constitution  was  not  republican  in  form  or  in  fact ;  and  I 
would  slam  the  door  in  her  face.  "  What  would  you  do  with  her  ?  " 
you  ask.  I  would  have  Congress  put  a  territorial  government 
over  her,  and  President  Johnson  to  appoint  a  chief  justice,  a  gov- 


288  DANGERS   AND  DUTIES   OF   THE  HOUR. 

ernor,  a  marshal,  etc.,  and  in  local  politics,  in  electing  justices, 
constables,  etc.,  I  would  set  the  people  to  voting.  If  I  should  al- 
low the  rebels  to  vote,  I  would  be  sure  to  checkmate  them  by  the 
votes  of  loyal  negroes  ;  and  thus  I  would  train  up  the  people,  black 
and  white,  to  the  use  of  the  ballot.  If  they  should  go  astray,  the 
supervisory  power  of  Congress  would  correct  all  mistakes  ;  and 
after  a  while,  when  a  population  had  been  secured  fit  for  State 
government,  I  would,  if  in  Congress,  vote  to  receive  Carolina 
ao-ain  into  our  embrace.  Some  of  the  States  might  be  received 
sooner,  and  under  less  exacting  conditions  than  others  ;  but  in  all, 
I  would  want  to  be  assured  that  no  future  harm  to  our  peace  could 
result  from  any  lack  of  vigilance  on  our  part  in  prescribing  neces- 
sary conditions. 

And  thus,  gentlemen,  I  think  I  make  this  question  of  recon- 
struction as  plain  as  the  way  to  your  homes.  Through  your  ser- 
vants in  Congress  the  power  is  in  your  hands,  unhindered  by  any 
constitutional  difficulty  to  do  exactly  what  may  seem  to  be  re- 
quired. I  trust  that  by  this  time  even  my  friend  Kilgore  under- 
stands my  position.  And  I  care  not  what  your  theory  is  as  to  the 
status  of  the  rebel  States.  Here,  on  the  admitted  ground  of  the 
power  of  Congress  to  prescribe  conditions  of  return,  and  to  guar- 
antee republican  governments,  the  whole  question  of  suffrage  is 
your  question,  and  you  cannot  escape  it  if  you  would. 

And  now,  Mr.  Chairman,  if  any  gentleman  desires  me  to  fortify 
my  position  still  further,  to  make  my  point  still  clearer,  I  will  en- 
deavor to  gratify  him  by  stating  another  proposition.  I  give  you 
no  mere  opinion  of  my  own,  but  the  voice  of  the  Nation  itself, 
speaking  through  its  highest,  judicial  tribunal  two  years  and  a  half 
ago,  in  a  case  involving  the  constitutional  rights  of  rebels,  and  the 
law  of  nations  applicable  to  the  war.  I  am  surprised  that  so  many 
of  our  public  men  ignore  this  decision.  The  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  decided  that  although  the  revolt  of  the  rebels  at 
first  was  a  mere  insurrection,  a  great  mob,  yet  when  it  grew  on 
our  hands  till  we  had  to  call  out  a  million  of  men  to  put  it  down, 
and  fit  out  six  hundred  ships  to  blockade  a  coast  of  twenty-five 
hundred  miles,  and  in  dealing  with  it  recognized  the  right  of  block- 
ade  and  the  other  ordinary  incidents  of  a  foreign  war,  then  and 
thenceforward  it  became  a  civil,  territorial  conflict,  like  that  of  a 
war  with  Mexico  or  France  ;  that  the  rebels,  while  still  liable  to  be 
hung  or  otherwise  dealt  with  for  treason,  took  upon  themselves  the 
further  character  of  public  enemies,  according  to  the  laws  of  war  ; 


DANGERS   AND   DUTIES   OF   THE   HOUR.  289 

and  that,  of  course,  when  conquered,  they  would   be   conquered 
enemies,  having  simply  the  rights  of  a  conquered  people.     I  state 
the  substance   of  the  point  decided,  as   I   understand   it,  in  my 
own  language.     Now,  the  law  of  nations  declares  that  the  rights 
of  a  conquered  people   are  exactly  such   rights  as  the  conqueror 
may  graciously  be  pleased  to  grant.     That   is  all,  gentlemen,  and 
I  am  for  giving  the   rebels   the  full  benefit  of  it.     When  they 
waged  a  public  war  against   the  nation,  went   outside  the   Con- 
stitution and  defied  its  power,  and  rested  their  cause  on  the  naked 
ground  of  lawless  might  ;  and  when  we  at  last  met  them  on  their 
own   chosen  issue   and  flogged    them,   they  had    no   rights   left. 
Uncle  Samuel  had  them  on  their  backs  in  the  gutter,  with  his  big 
foot   on  their  necks,  and   unless  by  his  grace  and  pleasure   they 
had  no  longer  any  right  but  to  die.     Parson  Brownlow,  I  believe, 
said  they  had  one  more  right,  and   that  was  a  divine  right  to  be 
damned,  after  they  were  dead ;  but  I  know  nothing  about  that.     I 
never  dabble  with  questions  of  theology,  and  profess  no  skill  in  it; 
but  I  know  that  according  to  the  law  of  nations  and  the  laws  of 
war,  as  applied  under  the  Constitution  to  this  quarrel,  the  rebels, 
by  their  defeat,  lost   all   their  rights.     State  rights,  constitutional 
rights,  civil  rights,  natural  rights,  all  the  rights   there  are,   were 
swallowed  up  and  lost  by  their  infernal  treason  and  war.     What  I 
have  said  already  about  the  authority  of  Congress  under  the  Con- 
stitution I  repeat  here,  as  to  the  authority  of  the  people  under  the 
right  of   conquest.     The   way   is  perfectly   open    to   you,   unob- 
structed by  any  constitutional  difficulty,  any  obstacle  in  any  form, 
to  do  exactly  what  may  seem  right  in  your  eyes.    "You  can  hold 
the  rebels  in  the  strong  grasp  of  war  till  the  end   and  purpose  of 
the  war,  which  is  a  lasting  peace,  shall  be  made  sure.     Are   any 
of  you  silly  enough  to  grant  that  after  they  have  waged  a  frightful 
war  of  four  years   on   the  pretext  of  State  Rights,  and  we  have 
conquered  them,  at  great  cost  of  blood  and  money  and  wide-spread 
sorrow  in  the  land,  we  must  allow  them  in  the  end  to  set  up  State 
Rights  again  as  a  bar  to  our  doing  precisely  what  we  please  ?    Did 
we  fight  them  as  a  mighty  public  foe,  guided  by  the  rules  of  wrar 
and  the  law  of  nations   up  to  the    moment  of  the   surrender  of 
General  Lee,  and   then,  by  some   devilish   necromancy,  were  we 
forced    to    make    a    dead    halt,  and  recognize  in  them   the  very 
rights   they  had    sinned   away  ?     That   doctrine   is    excellent  for 
Copperheads,  but  in  the  name  of  decency,  let  no  Republican  mouth 
it.     God    forbid !     If  an  assassin  assail    me,   and  after  a  fearful 
struggle  I  prostrate   him,  and  wrest  from  him  his  weapons,  shall  I 

19 


290  DANGERS   AND   DUTIES   OF   THE   HOUR. 

let  him  up,  restore  to  him  his  knife  and  revolver,  and  politely  ask 
him  about  terms  of  peace  ?  Gentlemen,  I  pray  you  not  to  forget 
the  cost  of  this  war.  In  considering  the  terms  and  conditions  of 
peace,  do  not  forget  the  rivers  of  blood  and  seas  of  fire  through 
which  so  many  of  our  brave  legions  waded  to  their  death.  Do 
not,  I  beseech  you,  so  soon  forget  the  widows  and  orphans  made 
to  mourn  through  stricken  lives  to  their  graves,  and  the  green 
mounds  under  which  sleep  so  much  of  the  glory,  and  pride,  and 
beauty  of  our  Israel.  And  will  you  remember  all  this,  and  then 
turn  to  the  rebels  as  "  misguided  fellow-citizens,"  "  erring  breth- 
ren," "  wayward  sisters,"  and  ask  them  about  the  conditions  of 
peace  ?  Shall  we  tell  them  that  our  conquest  over  them,  instead 
of  stripping  them  of  their  rights,  only  restores  those  rights  ?  —  that 
we  fought  for  a  military  victory,  utterly  barren  of  any  other  results, 
and  that  the  States  to-day  in  revolt  are  in  the  Union,  with  all  their 
rights  inhering,  state  and  constitutional,  and  have  never  been  out? 
Shall  we  deal  witli  conquered  traitors  and  public  enemies  as  equal 
sovereigns  with  ourselves,  and  insult  justice  and  mock  God  by 
pettifogging  their  cause?  Gentlemen,  I  repeat  it,  the  rebels  are 
in  our  power,  and  if  we  foolishly  surrender  it  we  shall  be  the  most 
recreant  people  on  earth.  The  glorious  fruits  of  our  victory  are 
within  our  grasp.  We  have  only  to  reach  forth  our  hands  to 
possess  them.  Let  me  plead  with  you  to  do  your  duty.  Breathe 
into  the  hearts  of  your  rulers  your  own  spirit  of  earnestness  and 
resolution.  Compass  this  administration  about  with  that  persistent 
pressure  which  at  last  gave  the  country  a  saving  policy  of  the  war 
under  Mr.  Lincoln.  Do  not  shrink  from  the  duty  of  frank  and 
friendly  criticism  of  the  conduct  of  your  public  servants,  when 
you  see  them  in  danger  of  going  astray.  Thunder  it  in  the  ears 
of  your  President  and  Congress  that  you  demand  the  hanging, 
certainly  the  exile,  of  the  great  rebel  leaders  ;  the  confiscation  and 
distribution  of  their  great  landed  estates  ;  and  that  the  governing 
power  in  the  South  shall  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  friends,  and 
not  the  enemies  of  the  nation.  Do  this,  and  the  result  will  be 
a  peace  with  the  South  as  lasting  as  her  hills,  and  our  Republic 
will  be  in  reality,  for  the  first  time  in  her  history,  the  model 
Republic  of  the  world. 


SUFFRAGE  IN   THE   DISTRICT   OF   COLUMBIA. 

HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES,  JANUARY  16,  1806. 

[The  bill  extending  the  right  of  suffrage  to  the  colored  people  of  the  District  of 
Columbia  was  debated  in  the  House  with  singular  thoroughness  and  force;  and  its 
passage  by  the  vote  of  yeas  116  to  nays  54  showed  the  progress  of  public  opinion,  and 
evidently  did  much  in  opening  the  way  for  the  enfranchisement  of  the  negro  in  the 
insurrectionary  districts.] 

Mr.  Speaker,  —  Whatever  doubts  may  arise  as  to  the  authority 
of  Congress  to  regulate  the  right  of  suffrage  in  the  districts  lately 
in  revolt,  none  can  exist  as  to  such  authority  within  the  District 
of  Columbia.  By  the  express  words  of  the  Constitution,  Congress 
here  has  "  exclusive  power  of  legislation  ; "  and  that  power,  of 
course,  extends  to  all  the  legitimate  subjects  of  legislation,  of  which 
the  ballot  is  unquestionably  one.  Shall  it  be  conferred,  irrespective 
of  color,  or  granted  only  to  white  men  ?  Shall  Congress  recognize 
the  equal  rights  of  all  men  in  the  metropolis  of  the  nation  and  the 
territory  under  its  exclusive  control,  or  must  our  national  policy 
still  be  inspired  by  that  contempt  for  the  negro  which  caused  slav- 
ery, and  finally  gave  birth  to  the  horrid  war  from  which  we  have 
just  emerged?  Shall  the  nation,  through  its  chosen  servants,  stand 
by  the  principle  of  taxation  and  representation,  for  which  our 
fathers  fought  in  the  beginning,  or  reenact  its  guilty  compact  with 
aristocracy  and  caste  ?  This  is  the  question,  variously  stated, 
which  confronts  us  in  the  bill  before  the  House.  It  must  now  be 
dealt  with  upon  its  merits.  To  attempt  to  postpone  or  evade  it  is 
to  trifle  with  the  dangers  and  duties  of  the  hour,  and  forget  all  the 
terrible  lessons  of  the  past. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  demand  the  ballot  for  the  colored  men  of  this 
District  on  the  broad  ground  of  absolute  right.  I  repudiate  the 
political  philosophy  which  treats  the  right  of  suffrage  as  merely 
conventional.  The  right  of  a  man  to  a  voice  in  the  government 
which  deals  with  his  liberty,  his  property,  and  his  life,  is  as  natural, 
as  inborn,  as  any  one  of  those  enumerated  by  our  fathers.  It  is 
said,  I  know,  that  natural  rights  are  only  those  universal  ones 
which  exist  in  a  state  of  nature,  in  which  every  man  takes  his 
defense  and  protection  into  his  own  hands  ;  but  I  answer  that  there 


292         SUFFRAGE   IN   THE   DISTRICT    OF    COLUMBIA. 

is  no  such  state  of  nature,  save  in  the  dreams  of  speculative  writers. 
The  natural  state  of  man  is  a  state  of  society,  which  demands  law, 
government,  as  the  condition  of  its  life,  By  the  right  of  suffrage 
I  mean  the  right  to  a  share  in  the  governing  power ;  and  while  the 
peculiar  manner  and  circumstances  of  its  exercise  may  fairly  be 
regarded  as  conventional,  the  right  is  natural.  If  not,  then  there 
are  no  natural  rights,  since  none  could  be  enjoyed  except  by  the 
favor  or  grace  of  the  government,  which  must  .decide  for  itself  who 
shall  be  permitted  to  share  in  its  exercise.  You  may,  if  you  choose, 
call  the  right  of  suffrage  a  natural  social  right ;  but  whatever  ad- 
jectives you  employ  in  your  definition,  the  right,  I  insist,  is  natural. 
Most  certainly  it  is  so  in  its  primary  sense.  My  friend  from  Iowa 
[Mr.  Wilson]  substantially  agrees  with  me,  for  he  speaks  of  suf- 
frage, not  as  a  privilege,  but'  as  a  right,  equally  sacred  with  those 
acknowledged  to  be  natural,  and  which  government  cannot  take 
awav.  Sir,  without  the  ballot  no  man  is  really  free,  because  if  he 
enjoys  freedom  it  is  by  the  permission  of  those  who  govern,  and 
not  in  virtue  of  his  own  recognized  manhood.  We  talk  about  the 
natural  right  of  all  men  to  life,  to  liberty,  and  to  the  pursuit  of 
happiness;  but  if  one  race  of  men  can  rightfully  disfranchise  an- 
other, and  govern  them  at  will,  what  becomes  of  their  natural 
rights?  The  moment  you  admit  such  a  principle  the  very  idea  of 
Democracy  is  renounced,  and  Absolutism  must  own  you  as  its  disci- 
ple. The  fact  that  society,  through  government  as  its  agent,  regu- 
lates the  right,  and  withholds  it  in  certain  instances,  as  in  the  case 
of  infants  and  idiots,  and  makes  the  withdrawal  of  it  a  punishment 
for  crime  in  others,  does  not  at  all  contravene  the  ground  I  assume. 
Society,  for  its  own  protection,  takes  away  all  natural  rights,  or 
rather,  it  declares  them  forfeited  on  certain  prescribed  conditions. 
Christianity  and  civilization  place  their  brand  upon  slavery  as  a 
violation  of  the  natural  rights  of  men.  But  that  system  of  per- 
sonal servitude  from  which  we  have  finally  been  delivered  is  only 
one  type  of  slavery.  Serfdom  is  another.  That  unnatural  own- 
ership of  labor  by  capital  which  grinds  the  toiling  millions  of  the 
Old  World,  and  renders  life  itself  a  curse,  is  not  less  at  war 
with  natural  rights  than  negro  slavery.  The  degrees  of  slavery 
may  vary,  but  the  real  test  of  freedom  is  the  right  to  a  share  in  the 
governing  power.  Judge  Humphrey,  speaking  of  the  freedmen, 
says,  "  There  is  really  no  difference,  in  my  opinion,  whether  we 
hold  them  as  absolute  slaves,  or  obtain  their  labor  by  some  other 
method."  The  old  slaveholders  understand  this  perfectly.  An  in- 
telligent human  being,  absolutely  subject  to  the  government  under 


SUFFRAGE   IN   THE   DISTRICT   OF    COLUMBIA.  293 

which  he  lives,  answerable  to  it  in  his  person  and  property  for  dis- 
obedience, and  jet  denied  any  political  rights  whatever,  is  a  slave. 
He  may  not  wear  the  collar  of  an}'  single  owner,  but  he  will  be 
what  Carl  Schurz  aptly  calls  "the  slave  of  society,"  which  is  often 
a  less  merciful  tyrant.  He  will  owe  to  the  mere  grace  of  the 
government  the  right  to  marry  and  rear  a  family  ;  the  right  to  sue 
for  any  grievance  ;  the  right  to  own  a  home  in  the  wide  world  ; 
the  right  to  the  means  of  acquiring  knowledge  ;  the  right  of  free 
locomotion  and  to  pursue  his  own  happiness  ;  the  right  to  a  fair 
day's  wages  for  a  fair  day's  work  ;  the  right  to  life  itself,  save  on 
conditions  to  be  fixed  without  his  consent,  and  which  may  render 
him  an  alien  and  an  outcast  among  men.  So  abject  and  humiliat- 
ing is  such  a  condition,  and  so  perfectly  does  the  world  understand 
the  sacredness  of  the  rights  of  the  citizen,  that  in  all  free  govern- 
ments his  disfranchisement  is  appropriately  made  a  part  of  the 
punishment  for  high  crimes.  Sir,  I  repeat  it,  there  is  no  freedom, 
no  security  against  wrong  and  outrage,  save  in  the  ballot ;  and 
Governor  Brownlow  is  therefore  thoroughly  right  in  principle,  in 
contending  that  the  constitutional  amendment  abolishing  slavery, 
and  giving  Congress  the  power,  by  appropriate  legislation,  to  en- 
force this  abolition,  authorizes  us  to  secure  the  ballot  to  all  men  in 
the  revolted  districts,  irrespective  of  color.  It  is  not  slavery  in 
form,  but  in  fact,  and  under  whatever  name,  that  the  people  of  the 
United  States  intend  to  have  abolished  forever. 

If  I  am  right  in  this  view,  color  has  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  the  question  of  suffrage,  as  the  gentleman  from  Iowa  [Mr. 
Kasson]  will  see.  The  negro  should  not  be  disfranchised  be- 
cause he  is  black,  nor  the  white  man  allowed  to  vote  because  he  is 
white.  Both  should  have  the  ballot  because  they  are  men  and 
citizens,  and  require  it  for  their  protection.  Are  you  willing  to 
rest  your  right  to  the  ballot  on  the  purely  contingent  fact  of  your 
color  ?  Your  manhood  tells  you  instantly  that  that  is  not  the 
foundation.  You  are  a  man,  endowed  with  all  the  rights  of  a  man, 
and  therefore  you  demand  a  voice  in  the  government ;  but  when 
you  say  this  you  assert  the  equal  rights  of  the  negro.  Neither 
color,  nor  race,  nor  a  certain  amount  of  property,  nor  any  other 
mere  accident  of  humanity,  can  justify  one  portion  of  the  people 
in  stripping  another  portion  of  their  equal  rights  before  the  law, 
the  common  master  over  all.  Government,  in  fact,  in  its  proper, 
American  sense,  is  simply  the  agent  and  representative  of  the 
governed,  in  taking  care  of  their  interest  and  guarding  their  rights. 
It  is  not  the  concern  of  the  few,  nor  of  the  many,  but  of  all.     The 


204  SUFFRAGE   IN   THE   DISTRICT   OF   COLUMBIA. 

negro,  doubtless,  would  have  been  born  white,  if  he  could  have 
been  consulted;  and  to  take  from  him  his  inherent  rights  as  a  man 
because  of  his  complexion,  is  a  political  absurdity  as  monstrous  as 
its  injustice  is  mean  and  revolting.  When  you  do  it,  you  aim  a  , 
deadly  stab  at  the  vital  principle  of  all  democracy.  If  you  may 
disfranchise  the  negro  to-day  on  account  of  his  race,  or  color, 
you  may  disfranchise  the  Irishman  to-morrow,  and  the  German 
the  next  day  ;  and  then,  perhaps,  you  will  be  prepared  to  strike 
down  the  laboring  man,  the  "  mudsill,"  adopting  the  Virginia 
philosophy,  that  "  filthy  operatives  "  and  "  greasy  mechanics  "  are 
unfit  for  political  power.  No  absurdity  or  wickedness  can  be  too 
great  for  a  people  who  could  thus  deliberately  sin  against  the 
great  primal  truths  of  democracy ;  and  the  logical  consequence  of 
the  first  false  step,  of  any  departure  whatever  from  the  rule  which 
makes  manhood  alone  the  test  of  right,  must  be  to  continually 
narrow  the  basis  of  popular  power  till  the  end  shall  be  a  remorse- 
less aristocracy  or  an  absolute  despotism. 

Mr.  Speaker,  this  view  of  suffrage  as  a  natural  right  greatly 
simplifies  the  whole  subject.  The  sole  question  is,  as  already 
stated,  whether  our  democratic  theory  of  government  shall  be 
maintained  in  practically  recognizing  the  inherent  rights  of  all  men 
as  the  source  and  basis  of  political  power?  To  ask  this  question, 
in  the  United  States,  is  to  answer  it.  And  public  policy,  also, 
answers  the  question  in  the  interest  of  the  broadest  radicalism. 
Duty  and  advantage  will  be  found  hand  in  hand  in  any  fairly 
tested  experiment  of  equal  suffrage.  According  to  the  census 
returns  of  1860,  the  colored  population  of  this  District  was  then 
over  fourteen  thousand.  It  is  now  estimated  at  about  twenty 
thousand.  The  value  of  real  and  personal  property  owned  by 
them  is  at  least  81,225,000.  They  own  twenty-one  churches, 
supported  at  a  cost  of  over  $20,000  per  annum.  The  whole  num- 
ber of  their  communicants  is  4,800,  with  an  average  attendance  of 
9,000,  distributed  among  their  own  religious  communities,  and 
among  the  Catholic  and  Episcopal  churches  of  their  white  fellow- 
citizens.  They  have  twenty  Sabbath-schools,  with  from  three  to 
four  thousand  scholars,  and  thirty-three  day-schools,  attended  by 
over  four  thousand  scholars  in  the  month  of  last  November.  Four 
thousand  of  the  colored  people  can  read  and  write.  They  sub- 
scribe for  1,250  copies  of  the  "  National,  Republican,"  and  about 
3,000  copies  of  the  Daily  and  Sunday  "  Chronicle."  There 
are  more  than  thirty  benevolent,  literary,  and  civic  organizations  . 
among  them,  by  which  their  needy,  superannuated,  and  infirm  are 


SUFFRAGE  FN   THE   DISTRICT   OF   COLUMBIA.         295 

cared  for  to  a  large  extent,  the  city  government  having  none 
or  very  few  colored  paupers  to  support.  They  furnished  three 
full  regiments  for  the  national  service,  numbering  in  all  3,549, 
and  from  sixty  to  seventy  per  cent,  of  the  drafts  in  the  District 
were  composed  of  colored  soldiers  or  substitutes.  This,  sir,  is 
the  character  and  condition  of  a  class  in  this  community  ninety 
per  cent,  of  whom  were  slaves  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  or 
their  immediate  descendants,  many  of  them  having  purchased 
their  own  freedom  and  that  of  their  families,  and  are,  besides, 
property  holders  to  a  considerable  extent.  Sir,  I  call  this  a  good 
record,  if  not  a  proud  one.  These  people  are  here,  and  they  will 
remain  here,  either  as  the  friends  or  the  enemies  of  the  govern- 
ment. If  we  shall  give  them  their  rights,  —  a  stake  in  society,  an 
equal  chance  with  the  white  man  to  fight  the  battle  of  life,  —  in- 
stead of  becoming  an  element  of  weakness  and  a  source  of  danger 
they  will  be  found  our  allies  and  friends,  and  thus  lend  unity  and 
strength  to  the  government.  If  we  shall  continue  to  disfranchise 
and  degrade  them,  we  shall  make  them  aliens,  domestic  foes  in 
our  midst,  a  perpetual  menace  of  danger  and  discord,  from  which 
we  shall  suffer  quite  as  much  as  the  party  thus  wronged  by  our 
cruel  folly.  As  a  matter  of  mere  policy,  therefore,  wholly  aside 
from  the  question  of  right,  I  would  give  the  ballot  to  every  colored 
man  of  competent  age  in  the  District ;  and  had  I  the  power  I 
would  secure  to  him  a  home  on  the  soil  he  has  so  long  watered  bv 
his  tears.  I  proposed  this  policy  for  the  revolted  States  in  a  meas- 
ure I  had  the  honor  to  report  to  this  House  two  years  ago,  provid- 
ing for  homesteads  on  the  forfeited  and  confiscated  lands  of  rebels ; 
and  had  it  prevailed  in  the  Senate,  as  it  did  in  this  body,  it  would 
have  wrought  out  the  only  true  reconstruction  of  government  and 
society  in  the  South.  The  great  want  of  every  poor  man  is  a 
home,  along  with  the  ballot  with  which  to  defend  it.  Russia,  in 
giving  freedom  to  her  millions  of  serfs,  secured  to  each  one  of 
them  a  homestead.  Our  policy  should  be  the  same.  In  the 
history  of  the  world  the  ballot  has  generally  followed  the  granting 
of  homesteads  to  the  poor;  but«the  poor  now  should  have  the 
ballot  as  the  surest  means  of  attaining  the  homestead.  Sir,  there 
is  but  one  remedy  for  the  appalling  picture  recently  presented  by 
John  Bright,  of  five  million  families  in  the  United  Kingdom  who 
are  unrepresented  in  Parliament,  and  whose  utter  helplessness, 
poverty,  and  degradation  appeal  in  vain  to  the  English  aristocracy. 
That  remedy,  as  righteously  due  these  voiceless  millions  as  the 
sunlight,  is  the  ballot.      Tliat  would  "  bend  the   powers  of  states- 


296  SUFFRAGE  IN   THE   DISTRICT  OF   COLUMBIA. 

manship  to  the  high  and  holy  purposes  of  humanity  and  justice," 
and  at  last  make  sure  to  the  lowliest  the  blessed  sanctuary  of  a 
home  upon  the  soil,  which  is  among  the  natural  rights  to  secure 
which  "  governments  are  instituted  among  men."  In  our  own 
more  favored  country  the  ballot  and  the  homestead  may  go  to- 
gether, and  should  be  conferred  at  once.  In  the  five  great  landed 
States  of  the  South  there  yet  remain  about  fifty  million  acres  of 
public  land  unsold,  all  of  which,  if  not  prevented  by  law,  will  be 
open  to  rebel  speculators.  This  should  be  set  apart  at  once  for 
actual  homesteads  in  limited  quantities,  and  a  bill  providing  for 
this  is  now  before  the  Committee  on  Public  Lands.  Every  landless 
freedman  in  the  country,  should  this  measure  prevail,  will  have,  at 
least,  a  chance  to  become  a  freeholder,  and  thus  to  unite  his  des- 
tiny to  the  government  as  its  friend.  This,  or  some  kindred  meas- 
ure, is  rendered  absolutely  necessary  by  the  unfortunate  failure  of 
the  policy  of  confiscation,  and  by  what  seems  to  me  the  criminal 
action  of  the  government  in  restoring  to  flagitious  rebels,  through 
pardons  and  otherwise,  the  vast  and  valuable  lands  which  had 
vested  in  the  nation  through  their  treason,  and  are  so  gi'eatly 
needed  and  have  been  so  justly  earned  by  the  freedmen.  Sir,  no 
other  policy  than  that  of  justice  and  equal  rights  can  be  trusted  in 
dealing  with  these  long-suffering  people.  Instead  of  driving  them 
to  thriftlessness  and  vagabondism,  I  would  bind  them  to  the  gov- 
ernment through  its  parental  care  for  their  welfare.  Let  us  give 
them  the  ballot ;  and  then,  should  a  public  grievance  come,  they 
will  bear  it  cheerfully,  as  self-imposed.  They  will  bide  their  time, 
in  the  hope  that  at  a  future  election  the  remedy  will  be  found. 
"  I  can  conceive  no  greater  social  evil,''  says  Governor  Parsons, 
of  Alabama,  "  than  a  class  of  humanity  in  our  midst  so  excluded 
from  the  social  pale  as  to  become  a  stagnant,  seething,  miasmatic, 
moral  cesspool  in  the  community.  Human  nature  cannot  improve 
without  the  moral  incentive  of  hope  in  a  human  future."  The 
policy  of  education,  of  moral  development,  can  alone  secure  the 
just  rights  and  the  highest  good  of  all  races ;  and  if  the  rulers  of 
other  countries  were  wise,  they  would  apply  this  truth  in  dealing 
with  their  discontented  and  dangerous  population.  "  Each  class 
in  England,"  says  the  "  Westminster  Review,"  "  as  it  has,  by  the 
natural  progress  of  civilization,  in  time  advanced  to  a  consciousness 
of  its  own  condition,  and  a  comparison  between  itself  and  others, 
has  in  turn  demanded  to  be  admitted  to  a  share  in  the  govern- 
ment. Each  in  turn  has  been  admitted,  and  the  country  has 
grown   more  and  more  powerful,  and  the  population   more  con- 


SUFFRAGE  IN   THE   DISTRICT   OF   COLUMBIA.  297 

tented,  as  the  basis  of  freedom  has  gone  down  lower  and  spread 
out  wider."  Sir,  I  trust  this  lesson  of  English  history,  slowly 
evolved,  and  now  held  up  to  us  by  English  radicals,  will  not  be 
slighted  in  dealing  with  the  question  of  negro  enfranchisement  in 
our  own  country. 

Mr.  Speaker*,  if  it  shall  be  objected  that  the  negroes  of  this 
District  are  not  fit  to  vote,  that  they  are  too  ignorant  and 
degraded  to  be  intrusted  with  power,  I  have  several  replies  to 
make. 

In  the  first  place,  the  negroes  of  this  District  are  not  all  igno- 
rant, as  I  have  already  shown  by  facts.  Many  of  them  are  edu- 
cated and  quite  intelligent.  The  larger  class  who  are  not  so  will 
not  suffer  by  a  comparison  with  the  very  large  class  of  their  igno- 
rant white  neighbors.  The  "  rounders  "  and  ruffians  who  instigate 
mobs  against  harmless  and  peaceable  colored  people,  and  then  pub- 
lish their  deeds  as  a  negro  insurrection,  and  who  have  probably 
been  on  the  side  of  the  rebels,  in  sympathy  or  in  fact,  during  the 
whole  of  the  war,  are  not  the  most  fit  men  in  the  world  for  the 
ballot.  They  vote,  and  there  is  no  proposition  from  any  quarter 
to  disfranchise  them.  The  policy  of  Massachusetts,  referred  to 
yesterday  by  the  gentleman  from  Iowa  [Mr.  Kasson],  would 
leave  them  untouched.  I  commend  this  fact  to  all  the  fair- 
minded  opponents  of  negro  suffrage. 

In  the  next  place,  fitness  is  a  relative  term.  Nobody  is  perfectly 
fit  to  vote,  because  nobody  is  perfectly  informed  as  to  all  the  sub- 
jects of  our  legislation  and  policy.  Of  the  millions  in  our  land 
who  regularly  go  to  the  polls  and  pass  upon  the  gravest  questions, 
how  many  could  stand  even  a  tolerable  examination  on  political 
economy,  or  constitutional  law,  or  political  ethics  ?  How  many 
men  of  good  sense  and  fair  intelligence  could  give  a  well-defined 
reason  even  for  some  of  their  most  decided  opinions  ?  The  truth 
is,  all  men  are  more  or  less  unfit  to  vote,  as  all  men  are  more  or 
less  unfit  to  discharge  all  their  duties,  civil,  social,  religious,  or 
what  not.  The  political  opinions  and  actions  of  the  generality 
of  men,  who  in  a  free  country  govern,  are  not  guided  by  logic, 
or  any  exact  knowledge,  but  by  habit  and  tradition,  by  their 
social  relations,  and  by  their  natural  trust  in  those  whom  they 
think  wiser  than  themselves.  On  this  subject  the  highest  au- 
thority of  which  I  have  any  knowledge  is  that  of  John  Stuart 
Mill.     He  says  :  — 

"  It  is  not  necessary  that  the  many  should,  in  themselves,  be  perfectly  wise  ; 
it  is  sufficient  if  they  be  duly  sensible  of  the  value  of  superior  wisdom.     It  is 


298         SUFFRAGE   IN   THE   DISTRICT   OF    COLUMBIA. 

sufficient  if  they  be  aware  that  the  majority  of  political  questions  turn  upon 
considerations  of  which  they  and  all  other  persons  not  trained  for  the  purpose 
must  necessarily  be  very  imperfect  judges,  and  that  their  judgment  must,  in 
general,  be  exercised  upon  the  characters  and  talents  of  the  persons  whom  they 
appoint  to  decide  those  questions  for  them,  rather  than  upon  the  questions 
themselves.  This  implies  no  greater  wisdom  in  the  people  than  the  very  ordi- 
nary wisdom  of  knowing  what  things  they  are  and  are  not  sufficient  judges 
of.  If  the  bulk  of  any  people  possess  a  fair  share  of  this  wisdom,  the  argu- 
ment for  universal  suffrage,  so  far  as  respects  that  people,  is  irresistible." 

Sir,  by  this  standard  I  am  willing  to  have  the  colored  people  of 
this  District  tried  ;  and  I  demand  the  same  trial  for  the  white  men 
who  are  loudest  in  their  protest  against  negro  ballots. 

Mr.  Garfield  :  I  desire  to  ask  the  gentleman  whether,  in  his 
reference  to  the  opinion  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  he  quotes  that  dis- 
tinguished writer  as  in  favor  of  unqualified  suffrage  ? 

Mr.  Julian  :  No,  sir.  I  quote  from  him  simply  to  show  his 
Opinion  as  to  the  measure  of  intelligence  deemed  by  him  necessary 
to  qualify  men  for  suffrage.  I  quote  the  extract  because  it  sus- 
tains the  point  I  am  arguing. 

Mr.  Garfield  :  I  did  not  ask  the  question  with  a  view  of  op- 
posing any  doctrine  the  gentleman  is  advocating,  but  merely  to 
suggest  that  Mr.  Mill,  in  the  volume  from  which  the  gentleman 
has  just  quoted,  takes  strong  ground  in  favor  of  suffrage  restricted 
by  educational  qualifications. 

Mr.  Hill:  Mr.  Speaker,  I  understand  my  colleague  to  base  his 
argument  in  favor  of  negro  suffrage  in  the  District  of  Columbia 
upon  the  personal  right  of  suffrage.  .  I  desire  to  ask  my  colleague 
whether  he  regards  that  as  a  personal  right  elsewhere  than  in  the 
District  of  Columbia ;  and  whether,  as  a  citizen  of  Indiana,  where, 
it  is  notorious,  negroes  have  not  for  years  past  been  permitted  to 
migrate,  he  is  willing;  to  extend  that  right  to  his  own  State  ? 

Mr.  Julian  :  I  shall  refer  to  that  question  presently  ;  and  an- 
swer it,  I  think,  to  the  satisfaction  of  my  colleague. 

Mr.  Speaker,  mere  knowledge,  education,  in  its  ordinary  sense, 
will  not  fit  any  man  to  vote.  It  must  depend,  as  Dr.  Lieber  says, 
upon  how  men  use  it.  He  declares  it  to  be  no  guarantee  for  free 
institutions,  and  refers  to  Prussia,  the  best-educated  country  in 
the  world,  where  liberty  is  an  outlaw.  The  reading  and  writing- 
test,  so  strenuously  urged  on  this  floor,  is  a  singularly  insufficient 
measure  of  fitness.  Reading  and  writing  are  mechanical  processes, 
and  a  man  may  be  able  to  perform  them  without  any  worthiness  of 
life  or  character.  He  may  lack  this  qualification,  and  yet  be  tol- 
erably fit  to  have  a  voice  in  the  government.     If  penmanship  must 


SUFFRAGE   IN  THE   DISTRICT   OF   COLUMBIA.         299 

be  made  the  avenue  to  the  ballot,  I  fear  several  honorable  gentle- 
men on  this  floor  will  be  disfranchised.  A  merely  educational  test 
would  allow  all  the  rebel  leaders  to  vote,  while  the  great  bodv  of 
the  people  of  the  South,  white  and  colored,  would  be  disfranchised. 
Sir,  education  of  the  heart  is  far  more  important  than  that  of  the 
brain.  "  The  soul  is  greater  than  logic."  The  hearts  of  the 
negroes  have  been  unfalteringly  with  us  all  through  the  war,  in- 
spiring their  judgment,  vivifying  their  convictions,  and  insuring 
their  universal  loyalty.  They,  of  all  men  in  the  South,  have  best 
vindicated  their  title  to  the  ballot. 

Mr.  Speaker,  our  American  democracy  has  never  required  any 
standard  of  knowledge  as  a  condition  of  suffrage  ;  and  the  educa- 
tional  test,  invented  by  the  Know  Nothings  some  years  ago,  dur- 
ing their  raid  against  the  foreigners,  would  not  now  be  thought  of, 
but  for  our  proverbial  hatred  of  the  negro.  According  to  our 
census  tables,  more  than  a  half  million  men  in  our  country  an- 
nually go  to  the  polls  who  can  neither  read  the  Constitution 
nor  write  their  names.  The  proposition  to  disfranchise  this  grand 
army  of  ignorant  men  would  meet  with  very  little  favor  in  any 
quarter.  No  public  man  dreams  of  it,  and  any  such  purpose  as  to 
the  ignorant  white  men  of  this  District  is  expressly  disavowed  by 
the  advocates  of  restricted  suffrage  in  this  House.  Sir,  the  real 
trouble  is  that  we  hate  the  negro.  It  is  not  his  ignorance  that 
offends  us,  but  his  color  ;  for  those  who  are  loudest  in  their  oppo- 
sition to  universal  suffrage  would  be  quite  as  unwilling  to  give  the 
ballot  to  Frederick  Douglass  as  to  the  most  ignorant  freedman  in 
the  South.  Of  this  fact  I  entertain  no  doubt  whatever,  and  I 
commend  it  to  the  attention  of  conservative  gentlemen  on  this 
floor,  who  imagine  that  a  vote  for  qualified  negro  suffrage  will  be 
less  offensive  to  their  negro-hatine;  constituents  than  for  the  bill 
now  under  discussion. 

In  further  reply  to  the  argument  which  would  disfranchise  the 
negroes  on  account  of  their  igorance,  allow  me  to  say  that  the 
ruling  class  have  made  them  ignorant  by  generations  of  oppression, 
and  no  man  should  be  allowed  to  take  advantage  of  his  own  wrong. 
Sir,  how  can  the  negro  emerge  from  his  ignorance  and  barbarism 
if  left  under  the  heel  of  his  old  tyrant  ?  I  agree  that  in  any 
scheme  of  universal  suffrage  universal  knowledge,  as  far  as  possi- 
ble, should  be  demanded ;  but  universal  suffrage  is  one  of  the  sur- 
est means  of  securing  a  higher  level  of  intelligence  for  the  ivhole 
People.  I  would  not  level  the  educated  classes  downward,  but  the 
ignorant  masses  upward,  by  giving  them   political   power  and  the 


300         SUFFRAGE   IN   THE   DISTRICT   OF    COLUMBIA. 

incentive  to  rise.  Our  first  duty  is  to  take  off'  their  chains,  as  the 
best  means  of  preparing  them  for  the  ballot.  By  no  means  would 
I  disparage  education,  and  especially  political  training  ;  but  the 
ballot  is  itself  a  schoolmaster.  If  you  expect  a  man  to  use  it  well 
you  must  place  it  in  his  hands,  and  let  him  learn  to  cast  it  by  trial. 
If  you  wish  to  teach  a  man  to  swim,  you  must  first  put  him  in  the 
water.  If  you  wish  to  teach  him  how  to  handle  the  tools  of  the 
mechanic,  you  must  first  put  them  in  his  hands.  If  you  wish  to 
teach  the  ignorant,  man,  black  or  white,  how  to  vote,  you  must 
grant  him  the  right  to  vote  as  the  first  step  in  his  education.  The 
negro,  I  am  sure,  will  generally  be  found  voting  on  the  side  of  his 
country,  and  gradually  learning  his  duties  as  a  citizen.  Sir,  let 
one  rule  be  adopted  for  white  and  black,  and  let  us,  if  possible, 
dispossess  our  minds,  utterly,  of  the  vile  spirit  of  caste  which  has 
brought  upon  our  country  all  its  woes. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  reply  still  further,  that  my  argument  is  not  at 
all  invalidated  if  I  admit  that  the  white  people  of  this  District  are 
decidedly  superior  to  the  negroes  in  education  and  general  intel- 
ligence. This  very  superiority  would  give  them  an  important 
advantage  over  the  class  not  thus  favored.  It  would  become  a 
powerful  weapon  in  carrying  out  their  peculiar  purposes  ;  and 
these  will  certainly  be  antagonistic  to  the  best  good  of  those  whom 
law  and  usage  have  so  long  injured  and  degraded.  If  any  class 
will  be  peculiarly  exposed,  and  need  the  strongest  safeguards,  it 
will  be  the  negroes,  who  have  been  made  comparative  children  in 
knowledge  and  self-help.  All  class  rule  is  vicious  ;  but  if  one 
class  must  rule  another,  it  will  be  found  far  better  to  allow  the  pre- 
rogative to  the  laboring  many,  whose  usefulness  and  numbers  best 
entitle  them  to  it,  than  to  confer  it  upon  the  aristocracy,  the  "gen- 
tlemen," the  idlers,  who  will  of  course  maintain  their  privileges. 
The  many  who  have  been  denied  equal  rights,  and  suffered  from 
the  privation,  will  be  quite  as  fit  for  political  power  as  the  few  who 
have  had  no  such  experience. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  hope  I  need  not  reply  to  the  argument  often 
urged,  that  negro  voting  will  lead  to  the  amalgamation  of  races,  or 
social  equality,  which  now  seems  to  mean  the  same  thing.  On  this 
subject  there  is  nothing  left  to  conjecture,  and  no  ground  for  alarm. 
Negro  suffrage  has  been  very  extensively  tried  in  this  country, 
and  we  are  able  to  appeal  to  facts.  Negroes  had  the  right  to  vote 
in  all  the  colonies  save  one,  under  the  Articles  of  Confederation. 
They  voted,  I  believe,  generally,  on  the  question  of  adopting  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States.     They  have  voted  ever  since  in 


SUFFRAGE   IN   THE   DISTRICT    OF   COLUMBIA.         301 

New  York  and  the  New  England  States,  save  Connecticut,  in 
which  the  practice  was  discontinued  in  1818.  They  voted  in  New 
Jersey  till  the  year  1840  ;  in  Virginia  and  Maryland  till  1833  ;  in 
Pennsylvania  till  1838 ;  in  Delaware  till  1831  ;  and  in  North 
Carolina  and  Tennessee  till  1836.  I  have  never  understood  that 
in  all  this  experience  of  negro  suffrage  the  amalgamation  of  the 
races  was  the  result.  I  think  these  evils  are  not  at  all  complained 
of  to  this  day  in  New  England  and  New  York,  where  negro  suf- 
frage  is  still  practiced  and  recognized  by  law.  Indeed,  the  fact  is 
notorious,  that  amalgamation  is  almost  totally  unknown,  except  in 
a  state  of  slavery,  which  obliterates  the  ties  of  life,  and  subjects  the 
negro  woman  to  the  unbridled  power  of  the  master  race.  Sir, 
give  the  colored  man  the  ballot,  so  that  he  may  maintain  the 
liberty  already  nominally  conferred,  and  the  best  possible  step  will 
have  been  taken  to  regulate  and  purify  the  relations  heretofore 
existing  between  the  races.  Should  the  Copperheads  and  rebels  of 
this  District  feel  in  danger  of  matrimonv  with  their  African  fellow- 
citizens  in  consequence  of  negro  suffrage,  I  would  have  Congress 
pass  a  law  for  their  protection  ;  but  I  would  not  withhold  the 
ballot  from  the  colored  people  for  a  reason  so  contingent,  and  so 
uncomplimentary  to  their  character  and  taste. 

Nor  do  I  deem  it  necessary,  Mr.  Speaker,  to  dwell  on  the  argu- 
ment that  negro  voting  will  lead  to  negro  office-holding,  negro 
domination,  and  ultimately  to  a  war  of  races.  Such  an  argument, 
current  as  it  is  in  certain  quarters,  finds  no  shadow  of  support  in 
any  known  facts.  The  experience  to  which  I  have  referred  cer- 
tainly can  alarm  no  one,  and  the  instances  are  rare,  if  in  fact  any 
can  be  adduced,  in  which  colored  men  have  held  office,  though  their 
numbers,  as  in  States  like  Pennsylvania,  Virginia,  and  Maryland, 
were  very  large  when  black  suffrage  was  allowed.  Sir,  no  fact  is 
more  notorious,  and  at  the  same  time  more  discreditable,  than  the 
nearly  universal  prejudice  of  the  white  race  in  our  country  against 
the  negro.  That  prejudice  will  not  pass  away  swiftly,  but  gradually 
and  slowly.  Like  every  other  form  of  injustice,  it  will  ultimately 
die  ;  but  the  prospect  of  this  is  clearly  not  immediate.  We  are  cer- 
tainly not  yet  so  in  love  with  the  negro  that  we  prefer  him  as  our 
ruler  ;  but  when  the  fact  shall  be  realized,  it  will  not  be  negro  dom- 
ination, but  negro  rule  of  choice,  by  white  as  well  as  black  suf- 
frage, and  cannot  therefore  lead  to  any  war  of  races.  This  is  quite 
evident ;  for  though  the  negroes  here  are  numerous,  and  in  por- 
tions of  the  South  constitute  the  majority,  the  tide  of  emigration 
from  the  North  and  from  Europe  must  very  soon  place  the  white 


302         SUFFRAGE   IN   THE  DISTRICT   OF    COLUMBIA. 

race  largely  in  the  ascendant  everywhere.  I  present  these  con- 
siderations in  order,  if  possible,  to  calm  the  fears  of  my  conserva- 
tive friends  ;  for  as  to  myself,  my  faith  in  democratic  principles 
depends  not  at  all  upon  any  temporary  or  local  results  of  their 
application.  Sir,  a  war  of  races  in  this  country  can  only  be  the 
result  of  denying  to  the  negro  his  rights,  just  as  such  wars  have 
been  caused  elsewhere  ;  and  the  late  troubles  in  Jamaica  should 
teach  us,  if  any  lesson  can,  the  duty  of  dealing  justly  with  our 
millions  of  freedmen.  Like  causes  must  produce  like  results. 
English  law  made  the  slaves  of  Jamaica  free,  but  England  failed 
to  enact  other  laws  making  their  freedom  a  blessing.  The  old 
spirit  of  domination  never  died  in  the  slave-master,  but  was  only 
maddened  by  emancipation.  For  thirty  years  no  measures  were 
adopted  tending  to  protect  or  educate  the  freedmen.  At  length, 
and  quite  recently,  the  colonial  authorities  passed  a  whipping  act, 
then  a  law  of  eviction  for  people  of  color,  then  a  law  imposing 
heavy  impost  duties,  bearing  most  grievously  upon  them,  and 
finally  a  law  providing  for  the  importation  of  coolies,  thus  taxing 
the  freedmen  for  the  very  purpose  of  taking  the  bread  out  of  the 
mouths  of  their  own  children  !  I  believe  it  turns  out,  after  all, 
that  these  outraged  people  even  then  did  not  rise  up  against  the 
local  government ;  but  the  white  ruffians  of  the  island,  goaded  on 
by  their  own  unchecked  rapacity,  and  availing  themselves  of  the 
infernal  pretext  of  a  black  insurrection,  perpetrated  deeds  of  rapine 
and  vengeance  that  find  no  parallel  anywhere,  save  in  the  acts  of 
their  natural  allies,  the  late  slave-breeding  rebels  against  our  flag. 
Sir,  is  there  no  warning  here  against  the  policy  of  leaving  our 
freedmen  to  the  tender  mercies  of  their  old  masters  ?  Are  the 
white  rebels  of  this  District  any  better  than  the  Jamaica  villains 
to  whom  I  have  referred  ?  The  late  report  of  General  Scliurz 
gives  evidence  of  some  important  facts  which  will  doubtless  apply 
here.  The  mass  of  the  white  people  in  the  South,  he  says,  are 
totally  destitute  of  any  national  feeling.  The  same  bigoted  sec- 
tionalism that  swayed  them  prior  to  the  war  is  almost  universal. 
Nor  have  they  any  feeling  of  the  enormity  of  treason  as  a  crime. 
To  them  it  is  not  odious,  as  very  naturally  it  would  not  be,  under 
the  policy  which  foregoes  the  punishment  of  traitors,  and  gives  so 
many  of  them  the  chief  places  of  power  in  the  South.  And  their 
hatred  of  the  negi*o  to-day  is  as  intense  and  scathing,  and  as  uni- 
versal as  before  the  war.  I  believe  it  to  be  even  more  so.  The 
proposition  to  educate  him  and  elevate  his  condition  is  everywhere 
met  with  contempt  and  scorn.     They  acknowledge  that  slavery,  as 


SUFFRAGE  IN   THE   DISTRICT    OF    COLUMBIA.         303 

it  once  existed,  is  overthrown  ;  but  the  continued  inferiority  and 
subordination  of  the  colored  race,  under  some  form  of  vassalage 
or  serfdom,  is  regarded  by  them  as  certain.  Sir,  they  have  no 
thought  of  anything  else  ;  and  if  the  ballot  shall  be  withheld  from 
the  freedmen  after  the  withdrawal  of  military  power,  the  most 
revolting  forms  of  oppression  and  outrage  will  be  practiced,  result- 
ing, at  last,  in  that  very  war  of  races  which  is  foolishly  appre- 
hended as  the  effect  of  giving  the  negro  his  rights. 

Mr.  Speaker,  a  more  plausible,  if  not  a  more  formidable  objec- 
tion to  negro  suffracre  in  this  District  remains  to  be  noticed.     Most 

©  © 

of  the  Northern  States  refuse  the  ballot  to  their  colored  citizens, 
and  even  deny  them  their  testimony  in  suits  in  which  white  per- 
sons are  parties.  In  Indiana,  which  has  done  so  noble  and  glorious 
a  part  in  the  war,  we  have  a  constitutional  provision,  and  laws  made 
in  pursuance  of  it,  by  which  negroes  from  other  sections  of  our  coun- 
try are  forbidden  to  enter  the  State.  It  is  made  a  penal  offense 
for  any  negro  or  mulatto  to  come  into  her  borders,  or  for  any  white 
person  to  bring  him  in,  or  employ  him  after  he  shall  have  come. 
Now,  how  can  the  representatives  of  such  States  be  expected  to 
vote  for  negro  suffrage  in  this  District  ?     If  Congress,  having  the 

©  ©  ©  *  O 

sole  and  exclusive  power  of  legislation  here,  ought  to  give  the 
ballot  to  the  negro,  why  should  not  Indiana  give  the  ballot  to  her 
negro  population  ?  And  how  can  Western  representatives  face 
their  constituents  and  answer  this  question,  after  having  supported 
this  bill  ?  And  it  is  just  here  that  its  passage  must  encounter  its 
greatest  peril :  for  members  of  Congress,  however  patriotic,  will 
be  exceedingly  glad  to  escape  this  dilemma,  and  to  avoid  the  com- 
mittal to  the  policy  of  negro  suffrage  generally,  which  would  seem 
to  be  implied  in  the  support  of  this  measure. 

In  seeking  to  meet  this  difficultv  several  considerations  must  be 
borne  in  mind.  In  the  first  place,  the  demand  for  negro  suffrage 
in  this  District  rests  not  alone  upon  the  general  ground  of  right, 
of  democratic  equality,  but  upon  peculiar  reasons  superinduced  by 
the  late  war,  which  make  it  an  immediate  practical  issue,  involving 
not  merely  the  welfare  of  the  colored  man  but  the  safety  of  society 
itself.  If  civil  government  is  to  be  revived  at  all  in  the  South,  it 
is  perfectly  self-evident  that  the  loyal  men  there  must  vote  :  but 
the  loyal  men  are  the  negroes,  and  the  disloyal  are  the  whites. 
To  put  back  the  governing  power  into  the  hands  of  the  very  men 
who  brought  on  the  war,  and  exclude  those  who  have  proved 
themselves  the  true  friends  of  the  country,  would  be  utterly  sui- 
cidal and  atrociously  unjust.     Negro  suffrage  in  the  districts  lately 


304         SUFFRAGE   IN   THE   DISTRICT    OF   COLUMBIA. 

in  revolt  is  thus  a  present  political  necessity,  dictated  by  the  self- 
ishness of  the  white  loyalist  as  well  as  his  sense  of  justice.  But 
in  our  Western  States,  in  which  the  negro  population  is  relatively 
small,  and  the  prevailing  sentiment  of  their  white  people  is  loyal, 
no  such  emergency  exists.  Society  will  not  be  endangered  by  the 
temporary  postponement  of  the  right  of  negro  suffrage  till  public 
opinion  shall  render  it  practicable,  and  our  Western  representatives 
can  thus  vote  for  this  bill  without  encountering  any  reasonable 
hostility  from  their  conservative  constituents,  and  leaving  the 
question  of  suffrage  in  the  loyal  States  to  be  decided  by  them  on 
its  merits.  If  Indiana  had  gone  out  of  her  proper  place  in  the 
Union,  and  her  loyal  population  had  been  found  too  weak  to  force 
her  back  into  it  without  negro  bullets  and  bayonets,  and  if,  after 
thus  coercing  her  again  into  her  constitutional  orbit,  her  loyalists 
had  been  found  unable  to  hold  her  there  without  negro  ballots,  the 
question  of  negro  suffrage  in  Indiana  would  most  obviously  have 
been  very  different  from  the  comparatively  abstract  one  which  it 
now  is.  It  would,  it  is  true,  have  involved  the  question  of  justice 
to  the  negroes  of  Indiana,  but  the  transcendently  broader  and  more 
vital  question  of  national  salvation  also.  Let  me  add  further,  that 
should  Congress  pass  this  bill,  and  should  the  ballot  be  given  to 
the  negroes  in  the  sunny  South  generally,  those  in  our  Northern 
and  Western  States,  many  of  them  at  least,  may  return  to  their 
native  land  and  its  kindlier  skies,  and  thus  quiet  the  nerves  of  con- 
servative gentlemen  who  dread  too  close  a  proximity  to  those  whose 
skins,  owing  to  some  providential  oversight,  were  somehow  or 
other  not  stamped  with  the  true  orthodox  lustre. 

It  should  be  further  remembered,  Mr.  Speaker,  that  the  bill 
before  us  relates  exclusively  to  this  District,  and  those  municipal 
and  police  powers  which  are  to  be  exercised  here  under  the  laws 
of  Congress.  Were  it  in  fact  dangerous  and  unwise  to  give  the 
negro  a  voice  in  the  general  legislation  of  the  country,  I  can  see 
no  objection  whatever  to  the  experiment  of  black  suffrage  in  this 
District,  in  the  purely  local  administration  of  its  affairs.  For  very 
excellent  reasons,  already  given,  I  believe  the  negroes  here  are 
entitled  to  the  ballot,  and  are,  at  least,  as  fit  as  multitudes  of  white 
men  who  are  unquestionably  to  have  it.  They  have  done  their  full 
share  in  saving  the  nation's  life.  Many  of  them  went  into  the 
army  as  the  substitutes  of  white  ruffians  and  vagabonds  who  daily 
"  damn  the  nigger,"  and  whose  unprofitable  lives  were  saved  by 
the  black  column  which  stood  between  them  and  the  bullets  of  the 
rebels.     Sir,  let  the  experiment  be  fairly  made  here,  on  this  model 


SUFFRAGE  IN  THE  DISTRICT  OF   COLUMBIA.         305 

political  farm  of  the  nation.  Should  it  fail,  Congress  will  abandon 
it  ;  should  it  work  well,  it  may  prove  a  most  excellent  forerunner 
of  measures  of  larger  justice  to  the  colored  race  in  our  land.  I 
do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  colored  soldiers  of  this  District  should 
alone  have  the  ballot,  because  no  such  rule  is  proposed  or  thought 
of  as  to  white  voting.  If  the  white  rabble  of  this  District  who 
did  not  enter  our  army,  and  who,  to  a  great  extent,  were  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  public  enemy,  are  to  vote,  as  they  undoubtedly 
will,  it  would  be  a  very  mean  mockery  of  justice  to  withhold  the 
ballot  from  loyal  negroes,  who,  although  they  did.  not  fight,  fur- 
nished the  government  with  their  full  share  of  men. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  ask  conservative  gentlemen  on  this  floor  to  con- 
sider duly  one  other  fact.  If  difficulties  are  to  be  encountered  in 
voting  for  this  bill,  still  greater  difficulties  are  to  be  met  in  voting 
against  it,  and  I  know  of  no  half-way  ground  in  dealing  with 
fundamental  principles.  To  vote  against  this  measure  is  to  vote 
against  the  first  truths  of  democratic  liberty.  It  is  to  vote  for  the 
old  spirit  of  caste  and  the  old  law  of  hate  which  have  so  terribly 
blasted  our  land.  It  is  to  vote  down  justice  and  install  misrule 
and  maladministration  as  king.  It  is  to  sanction  and  encourage, 
by  the  national  example,  the  barbarous  and  worse  than  heathen 
laws  of  the  Northern  and  Western  States,  already  referred  to, 
which  so  loudly  call  for  our  rebuke.  It  is  to  make  a  record  which 
the  roused  spirit  of  liberty  and  progress,  and  the  thick-coming 
events  of  the  future,  will  certainly  disown  and  turn  from  with 
shame.  And  while  such  a  vote  might  tend  to  placate  the  conserv- 
ative and  the  trimmer,  it  would  offend  those  radical  hosts  now 
everywhere  springing  to  their  feet,  and  preparing  for  battle  against 
every  form  of  inequality  and  injustice,  and  in  favor  of  "  All  rights 
for  all."  Sir,  justice  is  safe.  The  right  thing  is  the  expedient 
thing.  Democracy  is  not  a  lie.  God  is  not  the  devil,  "  nor  was 
Christianity  itself  established  by  prize  essays,  Bridgewater  be- 
quests, and  a  minimum  of  four  thousand  five  hundred  a  year." 
Far  better  will  it  be  for  a  Northern  representative  and  for  the 
cause  of  Republicanism  itself  to  vote  on  the  right  side,  of  this 
question,  even  should  it  cost  him  his  seat  on  this 'floor,  than  to  vote 
on  the  wrong  side,  and  thus  maintain  his  place  by  the  sacrifice  of 
both  his  own  manhood  and  the  public  welfare  intrusted  to  his 
hands.  Sir,  I  agree  that  the  passage  of  this  bill  would  tend  to 
open  the  way  to  perfect  equality  before  the  law  in  all  the  States. 
I  do  not  deny  that  the  public  would  so  understand  it,  and  I  de- 
cline none  of  the  consequences  of  my  vote.     Mr.  Jefferson,  speak- 

20 


306         SUFFRAGE   IN    THE   DISTRICT  OF   COLUMBIA. 

ing  of  the  negroes,  declared  that  "  whatever  be  their  degree  of 
talent  it  is  no  measure  of  their  rights,"  and  he  likewise  declared 
that  "  among  those  who  either  pay  or  fight  for  their  country  no 
line  can  be  drawn."  That  is  my  Democracy.  "  The  one  idea,' 
says  Humboldt,  "  which  history  exhibits  as  evermore  developing 
itself  into  greater  distinctness,  is  the  idea  of  humanity,  the  noble 
endeavor  to  throw  clown  all  barriers  erected  between  men  by 
prejudice  and  one-sided  views,  and,  by  setting  aside  the  distinc- 
tions of  religion,  country,  and  color,  to  treat  ihe  whole  human  race 
as  one  brotherhood."  Sir,  on  this  broad  ground,  coincident  with 
Christianity  itself,  I  plant  my  feet ;  and  no  man  can  fail  who  will 
resolutely  maintain  it. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  must  not  conclude  my  argument  without  refer- 
ring to  one  further  consideration,  by  which  the  passage  of  this  bill, 
in  my  judgment,  is  urgently  demanded.  I  have  argued  that  the 
ballot  should  be  given  to  the  negroes  as  a  matter  of  justice  to  them. 
It  should  likewise  be  done  as  a  matter  of  retributive  justice  to  the 
slaveholders  and  rebels.  According  to  the  best  information  I  can 
obtain,  a  very  large  majority  of  the  white  people  of  this  District 
have  been  rebels  in  heart  during  the  war,  and  are  rebels  in  heart 
still.  That  contempt  for  the  negro  and  scorn  of  free  industry 
which  constituted  the  mainspring  of  the  rebellion  cropped  out 
here  during  the  war  in  every  form  that  was  possible,  under 
the  immediate  shadow  of  the  central  government.  Meaner 
rebels  than  many  in  this  District  could  scarcely  have  been  found 
in  the  whole  land.  They  have  not  been  punished.  The  halter 
has  been  cheated  out  of  their  necks.  I  am  very  sorry  to  say 
that  under  what  seems  to  be  a  false  mercy,  a  misapplied  hu- 
manity, the  guiltiest  rebels  of  the  war  have  thus  far  been  al- 
lowed to  escape  justice.  I  have  no  desire  to  censure  the  author- 
ities of  the  government  for  this  fact.  I  hope  they  have  some  valid 
excuse  for  their  action.  This  question  of  punishment,  I  know,  is 
a  difficult  one.  The  work  of  punishment  is  so  vast  that  it  natu- 
rally palsies  the  will  to  enter  upon  it.  It  never  can  be  thoroughly 
done  on  this  side  of  the  grave.  And  were  it  practicable  to  punish 
adequately  all  the  most  active  and  guilty  rebels,  justice  would  still 
remain  unsatisfied.  Far  guiltier  men  than  they  are  the  rebel 
sympathizers  of  the  loyal  States,  who  coolly  stood  by  and  encour- 
aged their  friends  in  the  South  in  their  work  of  national  rapine 
and  murder,  and  while  they  were  ever  ready  to  go  joyfully  into 
the  service  of  the  devil  were  too  cowardly  to  wear  his  uniform 
and  carry  his  weapons  in  open  day.     But  Congress  in  this  District 


SUFFRAGE   IN   THE  DISTRICT   OF   COLUMBIA.  307 

has  the  power  to  punish  by  ballot,  and  there  will  be  a  beautiful, 
poetic  justice  in  the  exercise  of  this  power.  Sir,  let  it  be  applied. 
The  rebels  here  will  recoil  from  it  with  horror.  Some  of  the 
worst  of  them,  sooner  than  submit  to  black  suffrage,  will  doubtless 
leave  the  District,  and  thus  render  it  an  unspeakable  service.  To 
be  voted  down  and  governed  by  Yankee  and  negro  ballots  will 
seem  to  them  an  intolerable  grievance,  and  this  is  among  the  ex ' 
cellent  reasons  why  I  am  in  favor  of  it.  If  neither  hanging  nor 
exile  can  be  extemporized  for  the  entertainment  of  our  domestic 
rebels,  let  us  require  them  at  least  to  make  their  bed  on  negro 
ballots  during  the  remainder  of  their  unworthy  lives.  Of  course 
they  will  not  relish  it,  but  that  will  be  their  own  peculiar  concern. 
Their  darling  institution  must  be  charged  with  all  the  consequences 
of  the  war.  They  sowed  the  wind,  and  if  required  must  reap  the 
whirlwind.  Retribution  follows  wrong-doing;  and  this  law  must 
work  out  its  results.  Rebels  and  their  sympathizers,  I  am  sure, 
will  fare  as  well  under  negro  suffrage  as  they  deserve,  and  I  desire 
to  leave  them,  as  far  as  practicable,  in  the  hands  of  their  colored 
brethren.  Nor  shall  I  stop  to  inquire  very  critically  whether  the 
negroes  axe  jit  to  vote.  As  between  themselves  and  white  rebels, 
who  deserve  to  be  hung,  they  are  eminently  fit.  I  would  not  have 
them  more  so.  Will  you,  Mr.  Speaker,  will  even  my  Conservative 
and  Democratic  friends  be  particularly  nice  or  fastidious  in  the 
choice  of  a  man  to  vote  down  a  rebel?  Shall  we  insist  upon  a 
perfectly  finished  gentleman  and  scholar  to  vote  down  the  traitors 
and  white  trash  of  this  District  who  have  recently  signalized 
themselves  by  mobbing  unoffending  negroes  ?  Sir,  almost  any- 
body, it  seems  to  me,  will  answer  the  purpose.  I  do  not  pretend 
that  the  colored  men  here,  should  they  get  the  ballot,  will  not 
sometimes  abuse  it.  They  will  undoubtedly  make  mistakes.  In 
some  cases  they  may  even  vote  on  the  side  of  their  old  masters. 
But  I  feel  pretty  safe  in  saying  that  even  white  men,  perfectly 
free  from  all  suspicion  of  negro  blood,  have  sometimes  voted  on 
the  wrong  side.  Sir,  I  appeal  to  gentlemen  on  this  floor,  and 
especiallv  to  my  Democratic  friends,  to  say  whether  they  cannot 
call  to  mind  instances  in  which  this  has  been  done?  Indeed, 
it  rather  strikes  me  that  white  voting,  ignorant,  depraved,  party- 
ridden,  Democratic  white  voting,  had  a  good  deal  to  do  in  hatching 
into  life  the  rebellion  itself,  and  that  no  results  of  negro  voting  are 
likelv  to  be  much  worse.  I  respectfully  commend  this  considera- 
tion to  my  friend  from  Iowa  [Mr.  Kasson],  and  to  conservative 
gentlemen  here  on  both  sides  of  this  hall.     Sir,  as  I  have  argued 


308         SUFFRAGE   IN   THE   DISTRICT   OF   COLUMBIA. 

elsewhere,  all  men  are  liable  to  make  mistakes.  The  democracy  I 
stand  by,  the  fitness  to  govern  which  I  believe  in,  is  the  aggregate 
wisdom  and  practical  common  sense  of  the  whole  people.  This, 
and  not  the  wisdom  of  our  rulers,  or  of  any  select  few,  carried  us 
safely  through  the  rebellion,  and  this  only  can  be  trusted  in  time 
to  come.  There  is  no  other  reliance  under  God  for  us,  as  the 
champions  and  exemplars  of  Republicanism,  and  the  sooner  we 
bravely  accept  this  truth  the  better  it  will  be  for  all  races  and 
orders  of  men  composing  our  great  body  politic.  In  demanding 
the  ballot  in  this  District  for  the  despised  and  defenseless,  I  simply 
demand  the  national  recognition  of  Christianity,  which  is  "  the 
root  of  all  democracy,  the  highest  fact  in  the  rights  of  man."  I 
beseech  gentlemen  to  remember  this.  As  the  lawgivers  of  a  dis- 
enthralled Republic,  let  us  not  write  "  Infidel  "  on  its  banner,  by 
trampling  humanity  and  justice  under  our  feet  in  these  high  places 
of  power.  The  question  is  ours  to  decide.  The  right,  so  earnestly 
prayed  for,  is  ours  to  bestow.  The  assumption  set  up  by  the  white 
voters  here  of  the  right  to  decide  this  question  is  as  superlatively 
ridiculous  as  it  is  sublimely  impudent.  They  have  no  more  right 
to  vote  themselves  the  exclusive  depositaries  of  power  in  this  Dis- 
trict than  the  inmates  of  its  penitentiary  have  to  vote  themselves 
at  liberty  to  go  at  large.  Congress  is  the  sovereign  and  sole 
judge  ;  and  what  the  colored  men  here  ask  at  our  hands,  for  their 
just  protection,  and  as  their  sure  refuge,  is  the  ballot,  — 

—  "a  weapon  firmer  set, 
And  better  than  the  bayonet ; 
A  weapon  that  conies  down  as  still 

As  snow-flakes  fall  upon  the  sod  ; 
But  executes  a  freeman's  will 

As  lightning  does  the  will  of  God." 


AMENDMENT  OF  THE  CONSTITUTION. 

HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES,  JANUARY  29,  1866. 

[The  House  had  under  consideration  the  Joint  Resolution  reportedfrom  the  Com- 
mittee on  Reconstruction  for  the  amendment  of  the  Constitution.  The  views  here 
expressed  bearing  upon  the  second  section  of  the  Fourteenth  article  of  Amendment  did 
not  then  prevail,  but  their  soundness  will  now  scarcely  be  questioned,  and  has  been 
fully  vindicated  in  the  adoption  of  the  Fifteenth  Amendment.] 

Mr.  Speaker,  —  Before  this  debate  shall  be  concluded  I  desire 
to  submit  some  observations  which  I  deem  important,  and  which 
I  respectfully  commend  to  the  consideration  of  those  who  advocate 
the  proposition  reported  by  the  joint  committee  of  fifteen.  How 
I  shall  finally  cast  my  vote  on  that  proposition  I  cannot  now  cer- 
tainly decide.  I  find  difficulties  in  my  path  ;  and  I  shall  feel  much 
obliged  to  any  gentleman  who  may  be  able  and  willing  to  clear 
them  away,  and  thus,  perhaps,  assist  others  on  this  floor  in  reach- 
ing a  just  conclusion.  I  should  regret  exceedingly  to  separate  my- 
self from  those  with  whom  I  habitually  act  here,  by  opposing  the 
measure  referred  to,  and  I  must  not  do  so  without  recording  my 
reasons  ;  and  these  reasons,  in  so  far  as  they  possess  weight,  may 
serve  as  my  protest  against  whatever  is  objectionable  in  that  meas- 
ure should  its  modification  be  found  impracticable,  and  I  should 
finally  give  it  my  support  as  the  best  thing  within  our  power. 

Under  the  constitutional  injunction  upon  the  United  States  to 
guarantee  a  republican  form  of  government  to  every  State,  I  be- 
lieve the  power  already  exists  in  the  nation  to  regulate  the  right  of 
suffrage.  It  can  only  exercise  this  power  through  Congress  ;  and 
Congress,  of  course,  must  decide  what  is  a  republican  form  of  gov- 
ernment, and  when  the  national  authority  shall  interpose  against 
State  action,  for  the  purpose  of  executing  the  constitutional  guar- 
antee. No  one  will  deny  the  authority  of  Congress  to  decide  that  if 
a  State  should  disfranchise  one  third,  one  half,  or  two  thirds  of  her 
citizens,  such  State  would  cease  to  be  republican,  and  might  be  re- 
quired to  accept  a  different  rule  of  suffrage.  If  Congress  could 
intervene  in  such  a  case,  it  could  obviously  intervene  in  any  other 
case  in  which  it  might  deem  it  necessary  or  proper.  It  certainly 
might  decide  that  the  disfranchisement  by  a  State  of  a  whole  race 


310  AMENDMENT   OF   THE    CONSTITUTION. 

of  people  within  her  borders  is  inconsistent  with  a  republican  form 
of  government,  and  in  their  behalf,  and  in  the  execution  of  its  own 
authority  and  duty,  restore  them  to  their  equal  right  with  others 
to  the  franchise.  It  might  decide,  for  example,  that  in  North  Caro- 
lina, where  631,000  citizens  disfranchise  331,000,  the  government 
is  not  republican,  and  should  be  made  so  by  extending  the  fran- 
chise. It  might  do  the  same  in  Virginia,  where  719,000  citizens 
disfranchise  533,000 ;  in  Alabama,  where  596,000  citizens  disfran- 
chise 437,000 ;  in  Georgia,  where  591,000  citizens  disfranchise  465,- 
000  ;  in  Louisiana,  where  357,000  citizens  disfranchise  350,000  ; 
in  Mississippi,  where  353,000  citizens  disfranchise  436,000  ;  and  in 
South  Carolina,  where  only  291,000  citizens  disfranchise  411,000. 
Can  any  man  who  reverences  the  Constitution  deny  either  the 
authority  or  the  duty  of  Congress  to  do  all  this  in  the  execution  of 
the  guarantee  named?  Or  if  the  411,000  negroes  in  South  Caro- 
lina were  to  organize  a  government,  and  disfranchise  her  291,000 
white  citizens,  would  anybody  doubt  the  authority  of  Congress  to 
pronounce  such  government  anti-republican,  and  secure  the  ballot 
equally  to  white  and  black  citizens  as  the  remedy?  Or  if  a  State 
should  prescribe  as  a  qualification  for  the  ballot  such  an  ownership 
of  property,  real  or  personal,  as  would  disfranchise  the  great  body 
of  her  people,  could  not  Congress  most  undoubtedly  interfere  ? 
So  of  an  educational  test,  which  might  fix:  the  standard  of  knowl- 
edge so  high  as  to  place  the  governing  power  in  the  hands  of  a 
select  few.  The  power  in  all  such  cases  is  a  reserved  one  in  Con- 
gress, to  be  exercised  according  to  its  own  judgment,  with  no 
accountability  to  any  tribunal  save  tjie  people ;  and  without  such 
power  the  nation  would  be  at  the  mercy  of  as  many  oligarchies  as 
there  are  States.  Nationality  would  only  be  possible  by  the  per- 
mission of  the  States. 

The  same  authority,  Mr.  Speaker,  is  claimed  by  eminent  jurists 
under  the  constitutional  amendment  abolishing  slavery,  and  giving 
Congress  the  power,  by  "  appropriate  legislation,"  to  "  enforce  " 
the  provision.  The  word  "  appropriate  "  appeals  to  legislative  dis- 
cretion, and  the  word  "  enforce  "  implies  such  compulsory  meas- 
ures as  Congress  may  deem  "  appropriate  "  for  the  purpose  of  rid- 
ding the  country  of  every  vestige  of  slavery,  in  form  and  in  fact. 
"  There  can  be  no  denial,"  said  Chief  Justice  Parsons  not  long 
since,  "  that  when  this  whole  amendment  shall  be  adopted  Con- 
gress will  have  the  constitutional  power  —  be  its  exercise  of  this 
power  wise  or  unwise  —  to  rend  slavery  out  from  our  whole 
country,  root  and  branch,  leaf   and    fruit,  and  guard  effectually 


AMENDMENT   OF   THE   CONSTITUTION.  311 

against  its  return  in  any  form,  or  under  any  guise,  or  to  any  ex- 
tent." The  nation,  in  other  words,  having  given  freedom  to  four 
million  people,  can  make  that  freedom  a  blessing  by  conferring  it 
in  substance,  as  well  as  in  name.  It  not  only  can  do  this,  but  is 
sacredly  bound  to  do  it.  The  right  to  freedom  carries  with  it  the 
right  of  way  to  it,  and  that  right  of  way  is  the  ballot.  Without  it 
the  freedom  of  these  people  is  a  delusion  and  a  lie. 

The  freedmen  of  the  South  are  not  free,  and  cannot  be,  when 
left  to  the  domination  of  their  former  masters,  exasperated  by 
their  defeat  in  a  war  which  outraged  civilization  by  thus  aiming  to 
perpetuate  their  rule.  I  need  not  argue  this  proposition,  because 
no  man  can  dispute  it  without  ignoring  the  most  obvious  principles 
of  human  nature,  and  closing  his  eyes  to  well-authenticated  facts 
of  recent  occurrence  in  the  island  of  Jamaica  and  in  the  States 
lately  in  revolt.  Sir,  every  gentleman  on  this  floor  knows  what  a 
shadow  and  a  mockery  is  the  freedom  thus  far  vouchsafed  to  the 
millions  now  declared  free  by  the  Constitution,  and  that  to  com- 
mit their  fortunes  to  the  tender  mercies  of  white  rebels  would  be 
like  committing  the  lamb  to  the  jaws  of  the  wolf.  But  if  I  am 
right,  then  Congress  could  unquestionably  place  the  ballot  in  the 
hands  of  the  loyal  freedmen,  and  thus  arm  them  with  the  power 
of  self-defense,  and  save  them  from  a  condition  of  pitiless  serfdom 
in  comparison  with  which  slavery  in  its  old  form  would  be  a  bless- 
ing. I  ask  gentlemen,  therefore,  to  remember,  that  should  every 
proposed  amendment  of  the  Constitution  now  before  this  House 
be  voted  down,  we  shall  not,  I  think,  be  wholly  without  a  remedy 
for  the  evil  we  are  so  anxious  to  cure.  Instead  of  restricting  repre- 
sentation to  actual  suffrage,  we  can  extend  suffrage  to  actual  repre- 
sentation, which  will  be  far  better.  It  is  true  that  the  power  of 
Congress  to  guarantee  republican  governments  in  the  States  through 
its  intervention  with  the  question  of  suffrage  has  not  hitherto  been 
exercised;  but  this  certainly  does  not  disprove  the  existence  of 
such  power,  nor  the  expediency  of  its  exercise  now,  under  an 
additional  and  independent  constitutional  grant,  and  when  a  fit 
occasion  for  it  has  come  through  the  madness  of  treason.  It  will 
not  be  forgotten  that  we  have  entered  upon  a  new  dispensation. 
Slavery  sleeps  in  its  bloody  shroud.  Its  shaping  hand,  as  we  be- 
lieve, will  no  longer  mould  our  national  policy  at  home  or  abroad. 
Its  evil  genius  will  no  longer  inspire  our  public  men,  and  give  law 
to  the  nation  from  the  supreme  bench  ;  but  in  the  noonday  radi- 
ance of  universal  liberty  the  government,  I  trust,  in  all  its  de- 
partments, will  find  its  speedy  dt-liverance  from  the  trammels  of 
the  past.     Such,  at  least,  is  my  hone. 


312  AMENDMENT   OF   THE    CONSTITUTION. 

But,  Mr.  Speaker,  I  may  be  mistaken.  .We  may  not  be  able, 
at  a  single  bound,  to  escape  the  benumbing  influence  of  slavery. 
Our  exodus  from  the  long  and  sore  bondage  of  the  past  may  be 
tedious  and  toilsome.  Our  dwarfed  manhood  may  require  time 
and  judicious  tonics  to  restore  its  original  vigor.  I  cannot  feel  at 
all  confident  in  the  opinion  I  have  expressed,  when  I  find  so  many 
distinguished  gentlemen  on  this  floor  insisting  that  we  are  still  bound 
by  former  interpretations  of  the  Constitution,  in  the  interest  of 
slavery.  I  therefore  favor  a  constitutional  amendment  which  shall 
make  certain  that  which  may  otherwise  remain  doubtful.  But  I 
do  not  see  how  I  can  consistently  support  the  amendment  reported 
by  the  joint  committee,  though  I  do  not  say  that  I  will  not.  In 
the  first  place,  it  seems  to  me  that  it  offends  the  moral  sense  of  the 
country.  It  provides  "that  whenever  the  elective  franchise  shall 
be  denied  or  abridged  in  any  State  on  account  of  race  or  color,  all 
persons  of  such  race  or  color  shall  be  excluded  from  the  basis  of 
representation."  Sir,  what  right  has  any  State  "  to  deny  or  abridge 
the  elective  franchise  on  account  of  race  or  color?  "  To  assent  to 
such  a  proposition  is  to  insult  humanity  and  mock  justice.  It  is, 
moreover,  as  absurd  as  to  deny  or  abridge  the  franchise  on  ac- 
count of  the  distance  across  the  Atlantic  or  the  height  of  the 
Alleghanies.  Why  not  say,  in  the  plain  affirmative  words  of  the 
amendment  submitted  by  the  gentleman  from  Massachusetts  [Mr. 
Eliot],  that  —  "The  elective  franchise  shall  not  be  denied  or 
abridged  in  any  State  on  account  of  race  or  color?" 

The  distinguished  chairman  of  the  joint  committee  concedes  the 
right  of  a  State  under  the  Constitution  to  disfranchise  its  citizens 
for  such  cause,  and  so  does  my  friend  from  New  York  [Mr. 
Conkling].  If  they  are  right,  then  the  very  thing  to  be  done  is 
to  amend  the  Constitution  in  that  particular.  Have  we  any 
authority  to  sacrifice  the  rights  of  a  whole  race  in  the  South  in 
order  to  save  ourselves  from  the  evils  of  unequal  representation, 
and  thus  compound  with  injustice  and  oppression  ?  Will  the 
world  justify  us  in  protecting  our  own  political  rights  and  abridg- 
ing the  rights  of  white  rebels  at  the  expense  of  millions  of  freed- 
men  who  will  thus  be  made  the  vicarious  victims  of  our  policy  ? 
Would  that  be  an  honest  payment  of  the  debt  we  religiously  owe 
them  ?  My  friend  from  Ohio  [Mr.  Bingham]  differs  with  his 
colleagues  on  the  joint  committee  as  to  the  right  of  a  State  to  dis- 
franchise her  citizens,  and  defends  the  proposed  amendment  as  a 
mere  penalty,  designed  to  restrain  the  States  from  violating  their 
constitutional  duty. 


AMENDMENT   OF   THE    CONSTITUTION.  313 

Mr.  Bingham  :  I  do  not  admit  and  never  have  admitted  that 
any  State  has  a  right  to  disfranchise  any  portion  of  the  citizens  of 
the  United  States,  resident  therein,  entitled  to  vote  for  representa- 
tive^ under  the  second  section  of  the  first  article  of  the  Constitu- 
tion, except  as  a  punishment  for  their  own  crimes.  A  citizen  may 
forfeit  his  right  by  crime,  and  the  State  may  enforce  that  forfeiture. 
I  favor  this  amendment  as  a  penalty  in  aid  of  the  rights  guaranteed 
by  the  Constitution  as  it  now  stands. 

Mr.  Julian  :  The  gentleman  misunderstands  what  I  said.  I 
have  just  stated  what  the  gentleman  from  Ohio  now  affirms,  that 
he  defends  the  amendment  reported  by  the  committee  as  a  mere 
penalty  intended  to  restrain  the  States  from  striking  down  the 
rights  of  their  citizens  under  the  Constitution  ;  but  as  we  are  now 
endeavoring  to  amend  the  Constitution,  why  incorporate  in  it  a 
mere  penalty  against  its  violation,  which  at  least  seems  to  imply 
the  right  to  violate  it,  if  the  penalty  shall  be  accepted  ?  Since  the 
whole  policy  of  the  government  from  its  beginning  has  yielded 
the  right  of  the  Southern  States  to  disfranchise  their  people  of 
color,  why  not  provide  a  positive  prohibition  of  such  right  ?  Mr. 
Madison  declared  it  to  be  wrong  "  to  admit  in  the  Constitution  the 
idea  that  there  can  be  property  in  man."  So  I  say  it  seems  to  me 
wrong  to  admit  in  this  amendment  the  idea  that  the  rights  of  the 
citizen  can  be  taken  away  by  reason  of  color  or  race,  and  that  in 
perfecting  the  organic  law  of  the  nation  we  should  avoid  any 
phraseology  which  by  any  possibility  would  admit  a  construction 
so  fatal  to  the  fundamental  principle  of  all  free  government.  Why 
temporize  by  adopting  half-way  measures  and  a  policy  of  indirec- 
tion? The  shortest  distance  between  two  given  points  is  a  straight 
line.  Let  us  follow  it,  in  so  important  a  work  as  amending  the 
Constitution.  The  advocates  of  the  proposed  amendment  do  not 
profess  to  be  satisfied  with  it.  They  confess  that  it  comes  short  of 
its  purpose.  They  say  they  have  another  proposition  in  reserve 
which  will  cover  the  whole  ground.  Then  whv  not  bring  it  for- 
ward  and  let  us  meet  it  on  its  merits  ?  Why  yield  any  longer  to 
the  policy  of  compromise  ?  Sir,  remembering  the  mistakes  of  our 
fathers  in  the  beginning,  and  the  frightful  legacy  to  their  children 
which  has  been  the  result,  let  us  be  warned  against  any  short- 
sighted and  temporary  expedients  to-day.  Let  us  bring  ourselves 
face  to  face  with  the  great  demand  of  the  nation  upon  us,  and 
then  appeal  to  the  people  to  sanction  a  plain,  unambiguous  amend- 
ment of  the  Constitution,  which  we  believe  to  be  necessary  for 
their  future  security. 


314  AMENDMENT  OF   THE    CONSTITUTION. 

But  the  advocates  of  this  measure,  while  promising,  us  a  better, 
frankly  tell  us  it  is  the  best  we  can  now  hope  to  secure.  They 
defend  it  on  this  ground,  and  insist  that  our  present  alternative  is 
between  its  adoption,  and  the  representation  of  four  million  loyal 
colored  people  in  Congress  by  ex-rebels,  who  would  utterly  mis- 
represent their  wishes  and  trample  down  their  rights.  To  this 
several  answers  are  obviously  suggested. 

In  the  first  place  how  do  you  know  that  the  broad  proposition  I 
advocate  will  fail  in  Congress,  or  before  the  people.  These  are 
revolutionary  days.  Whole  generations  of  common  time  are  now 
crowded  into  the  span  of  a  few  years.  Life  was  never  before  so 
grand  and  blessed  an  opportunity.  The  man  mistakes  his  reckon- 
ing who  judges  either  the  present  or  the  future  by  any  political 
almanac  of  by-gone  years.  Growth,  development,  progress,  are 
the  expressive  watchwords  of  the  hour.  Who  can  remember  the 
marvelous  events  of  the  past  four  years,  necessitated  by  the  late 
war,  and  then  predict  the  failure  of  further  measures,  woven  into 
the  same  fabric,  and  born  of  the  same  inevitable  logic?  It  is  only 
a  few  days  since  this  nation,  speaking  through  its  Representatives 
on  this  floor,  by  a  vote  of  116  against  54,  deliberately  sanctioned 
the  very  policy  I  urge  as  an  amendment  to  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States.  Sir,  if  that  policy  is  right  in  this  District,  shall 
we  decline  to  extend  it  over  the  districts  lately  in  revolt  where 
far  stronger  reasons  plead  for  it  ?  Shall  we  distrust  the  people, 
who  have  been  so  ready  to  second  all  radical  measures  during  the 
war,  and  now  speak  with  such  emphasis  on  emerging  with  newly 
anointed  vision  from  its  terrible  baptism  of  fire  and  blood  ?  And 
besides,  how  do  you  know,  Mr.  Speaker,  that  even  the  proposition 
reported  by  the  committee  can  prevail,  either  in  Congress  or  in 
the  States  ?  It  encounters,  I  know,  a  very  considerable  opposition 
here,  and  I  sincerely  hope  it  may  be  recommitted  and  amended. 
It  may  encounter  a  greater  opposition  in  the  States.  Its  indirect 
mode  of  reaching  a  desirable  result,  and  its  apparent  recognition 
of  the  infernal  heresy  of  State  sovereignty,  may  seriously  endan- 
ger, if  not  totally  defeat,  the  proposition.  Sir,  I  hope  this  sugges- 
tion will  not  be  deemed  unworthy  of  consideration.  But  the 
question,  after  all,  is,  what  amendment  of  the  Constitution,  if  any, 
is  really  demanded  ?  If  we  can  agree  as  to  this,  then  we  should 
submit  it,  trusting  in  God,  in  the  people,  and  in  the  great  educa- 
tional forces  now  everywhere  at  work,  that  it  will  prevail.  Should 
it  fail  for  a  season,  it  will  triumph  ultimately,  and  in  the  end  repay 
all   the  cost  of  its  delav.     Neither  constitutional  amendments  nor 


AMENDMENT   OF  THE   CONSTITUTION.  315 

reforms  in  any  other  direction  could  make  much  headway,  if  no 
man  should  ever  espouse  them  till  the  people  are  found  prepared 
to  accept  them  without  opposition  or  dissent. 

Again,  Mr.  Speaker,  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  the  proposed 
amendment,  should  it  prevail,  must  fail  of  its  purpose  till  after  the 
census  of  1870.  If  I  am  not  mistaken,  there  could  be  no  new 
allotment  of  representatives  among  the  Southern  States  prior  to 
that  time.  If  I  am  mistaken,  and  the  Constitution  will  permit  us 
to  take  another  census  whenever  we  choose,  it  will  not  make  anv 
practical  difference,  as  no  one  proposes  that  measure,  and  if  adopted, 
the  reapportionment  under  the  new  census  could  not  take  effect 
sooner  than  the  time  I  have  named.  In  all  these  intervening 
years,  therefore,  these  rebel  States  must  have  their  full  representa- 
tion under  the  existing  basis,  or  else  their  representatives  must  be 
kept  out  of  Congress.  If  they  should  be  admitted,  prior  to  the 
passage  of  the  amendment,  there  would  be  no  coercive  authority 
in  the  hands  of  the  Executive  or  Congress  to  constrain  any  State 
to  ratify  the  amendment,  and  it  could  not  be  ratified.  If  the 
Southern  Representatives  should  not  be  admitted,  then  the  evils  of 
unequal  representation  would  be  avoided,  so  long  as  they  are  kept 
out.  The  object  of  the  amendment,  therefore,  namely,  the  reduc- 
tion of  rebel  representation  in  Congress  and  the  extension  of  suf- 
frage to  the  whole  people  of  the  South,  could  not  be  secured 
before  the  year  1870,  or  1872,  if  the  next  census  shall  be  taken  at 
the  regular  time ;  and  then  it  would  remain  for  the  Southern 
States  to  say  whether  they  wrould  give  the  ballot  to  the  negroes,  or 
still  cling  to  that  unchristian  spirit  of  caste  and  lust  of  power  which 
have  so  long  been  the  higher  law  of  the  South.  If  I  am  correct 
in  making  these  statements,  much  of  the  alleged  practical  signifi- 
cance of  the  proposed  amendment  is  made  to  disappear,  and  we 
are  thus  the  better  prepared  to  demand  the  amendment  really 
necessary  and  effective,  or  else  such  congressional  action  as  shall 
grant  suffrage  to  the  people  of  the  South,  irrespective  of  color. 
Should  both  these  measures  for  the  present  be  found  impracticable, 
I  do  not  see  that  any  great  interest  of  the  country  will  suffer  in 
consequence,  while  the  regular  march  of  events  and  the  great  tidal 
force  of  public  opinion  will  at  length  open  the  way  for  such  action, 
in  some  form,  as  shall  be  required  by  the  national  exigency. 

Finally,  Mr.  Speaker,  I  deny  that  the  rebels  of  the  South,  who 
are  the  rulers  of  the  South,  would  grant  the  ballot  to  the  negro  if 
the  proposed  amendment  were  now  in  full  force.  They  would  not 
do  it,  because  their  love  of  domination,  their  contempt  for  free 


316  AMENDMENT   OF   THE   CONSTITUTION. 

labor,  and  their  scorn  of  an  enslaved  and  downtrodden  race  are  as 
intense  as  ever.  They  hate  the  negro  now,  not  simply  as  the  ally 
of  the  Yankee  in  foiling  their  treason,  but  as  the  author  of  all 
their  misfortunes,  who,  having  been  villainously  misused  by  them, 
is  of  course  villainously  despised.  They  hate  .him  with  a  rancor 
that  feeds  unceasingly  upon  everv  memory  of  their  humiliation  and 
defeat.  They  confront  him  with  a  hatred  so  remorseless,  wither- 
ing, consuming,  that  it  crops  out  to-day  in  every  quarter  of  the 
Soutli  in  deeds  of  outrage,  violence,  and  crime,  which  find  no 
parallel  even  in  the  atrocities  practiced  in  that  section  under  the 
old  codes  of  slavery,  which  were  codes  of  murder  and  all  minor 
crimes.  Can  any  gentleman  read  the  late  report  of  General 
Schurz,  and  listen  to  the  testimony  of  the  great  cloud  of  concur- 
ring witnesses  whose  voices  are  now  filling  the  land,  respecting  the 
popular  feeling  in  the  South,  and  then  believe  that  the  rebel  class 
will  ever,  under  any  inducements,  voluntarily  give  equal  political 
rights  to  the  freedmen  ?  The  leaders  of  Southern  opinion  openly 
declare  that  they  would  rather  die  than  give  the  ballot  to  their 
former  slaves.  While  it  would  give  their  section  an  increased  rep- 
resentation in  Congress,  that  representation  would  be  secured  by 
the  votes  of  negroes  and  abolitionists,  whose  darling  purpose  would 
be  to  Yankeeize  and  abolitionize  the* entire  South,  and  put  the  old 
slave  dynasty  hopelessly  under  their  feet.  And  the  old  slave  dy- 
nasty understands  this  perfectly.  They  know  that  negro  suffrage, 
by  checking  rebel  rapacity  and  restoring  order,  and  thus  rendering 
emigration  from  the  North  and  from  Europe  a  safe  and  practica- 
ble thing,  will  reorganize  the  whole  structure  of  society  in  their 
region,  and  thus  doom  their  pride  and  sloth  to  a  hopeless  conflict 
with  the  energy  and  enterprise  of  free  labor.  Do  you  tell  me  that 
men  are  governed  by  their  own  interests,  and  that  the  ruling  class 
in  the  South,  finding  no  other  way  to  serve  those  interests,  will  ex- 
tend suffrage  to  the  negroes  ?  I  answer,  that  long-cherished  and 
traditionary  prejudices  and  passions  are  stronger  than  interest.  It 
was  always  the  true  interest  of  the  South  to  abolish  her  slavery, 
but  she  waged  a  horrid  war  to  save  and  eternize  it.  She  could 
always  have  increased  her  power  in  Congress  by  its  abolition,  but 
she  loved  her  domination  over  the  negro  more  than  she  loved  polit- 
ical power.  It  was  the  interest  of  the  Northern  States,  long  ago, 
to  unite  in  checking  the  aggressions  and  the  further  spread  of  slav- 
ery in  the  Union,  and  thereby  to  hasten  the  employment  of  peace- 
able measures  in  the  South  for  its  abandonment ;  but  the  Northern 
States,  on  the  contrary,  became  the  allies  of  the  slave  breeders  in 


AMENDMENT   OF  THE   CONSTITUTION.  317 

fortifying  and  extending  their  rule  on  this  Continent.  It  was  the 
interest  of  our  first  parents  not  to  sin,  but  the  devil  proved  too 
much  for  them.  Sir,  the  argument  of  interest  will  not  do.  Passion 
is  stronger  than  interest,  because,  being  blind,  it  does  not  perceive 
the  best  good.  Before  I  agree  to  intrust  the  freedmen  to  the  inter- 
est of  their  old  masters,  I  want  to  know  that  they  understand  what 
their  interest  is,  and  that  they  have  so  far  outlived  their  prejudices 
that  they  will  follow  it.  I  think  no  gentleman  on  this  floor  can 
feel  sure  on  these  points.  What  we  want,  what  the  nation  needs 
for  its  own  salvation,  is  a  constitutional  amendment,  or  a  law  of 
Congress,  which  shall  guarantee  the  ballot  to  the  freedman  of  the 
South.  This  is  not  simply  his  equal  political  right  as  a  citizen,  but 
his  natural  right  as  a  man.  As  I  have  argued  on  another  occasion, 
a  voice  in  the  government  which  deals  with  property,  liberty,  and 
life,  is  not  a  "  privilege,"  but  a  riyJit,  and  as  natural,  as  indefeasi- 
ble as  the  right  to  life  itself.  Government  cannot  rightfully  with- 
hold it,  but  is  as  sacredly  bound  to  secure  it  to  all  men,  regardless 
of  race  or  color,  as  it  is  bound  to  secure  other  rights  which  are  ac- 
corded to  them  by  common  consent  as  natural.  In  this  view  I  am 
very  glad  to  find  myself  sustained  by  some  of  the  ablest  men  in 
this  House.  Our  fathers  affirmed,  as  a  self-evident  truth,  that  all 
men  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  the  right  to  life,  liberty, 
and  the  pursuit  of  happiness  ;  and  that  governments  are  instituted 
among  men  to  secure  these  rights,  deriving  their  just  powers  from 
the  consent  of  the  governed.  Sir,  let  us  not  shrink  from  the  prac-« 
tical  vindication  of  this  truth.  Let  us  recognize  no  such  anomalv 
in  our  free  system  of  government  as  a  disfranchised  citizen,  inno- 
cent of  crime,  but  prize  the  franchise  as  so  sacred  that  a  man  with- 
out it  shall  everywhere,  and  of  necessity,  wear  the  brand  of  a  con- 
victed enemy  of  society.  Let  us  not  preach  a  mere  lip-democracy, 
while  we  confess  by  our  acts  our  faith  in  the  maxims  of  despotism. 
Let  us  not,  with  the  warnings  of  the  past  before  us,  still  continue 
to  deny  the  very  gospel  of  our  political  salvation,  and  arm  the 
absolutists  of  the  Old  World  with  weapons  fatal  to  every  just 
theory  of  republicanism.  Let  us  not  make  enemies  and  outlaws 
of  four  million  people,  among  whom  no  traitor  or  sympathizer  with 
treason  has  ever  yet  been  found  ;  who  were  eager  to  help  us  from 
the  very  beginning  of  our  struggle,  and  as  soon  as  we  were  ready 
gladly  furnished  nearly  two  hundred  thousand  soldiers  to  aid  in 
saving  the  nation's  life  ;  and  who,  if  allowed  justice  at  our  hands, 
will  be  found  in  the  future,  as  they  have  been  in  the  past,  our 
effective  auxiliaries   and  most  faithful   friends.     Above  all,  let  us 


318  AMENDMENT    OF   THE   CONSTITUTION. 

remember,  for  our  own  sake  as  well  as  that  of  the  colored  race, 
that  Justice  is  omnipotent ;  that  her  demands  must  be  met  to  the 
uttermost  farthing,  and  cannot  be  slighted  without  offending  the 
Most  High ;  and  that  if,  when  our  pathway  is  lighted  up  by  the 
fires  of  a  stupendous  civil  war,  which  the  whole  world  interprets 
as  the  avenger  of  these  wronged  millions,  we  now  turn  a  deaf  ear 
to  their  cries,  our  guilt  as  a  nation,  and  our  retribution,  will  find 
no  precedent  in  the  annals  of  mankind. 


THE  PUNISHMENT  OF  REBEL  LEADERS. 

HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES,  APRIL  30,  1866. 

[The  Faculty  of  "Washington  College,  Virginia,  last  year  (1870)  proposed  so  to 
amend  its  charter  as  "  to  express  in  fit  conjunction  the  immortal  names  of  Wash- 
ington and  Lee,  whose  lives  were  so  similar  in  their  perfect  renown."  This  was  per- 
fectly natural,  in  so  far  as  the  government  has  done  nothing  to  brand  treason  as  a 
crime,  while  making  haste  to  remove  the  political  disabilities  imposed  by  the  Four- 
teenth Constitutional  Amendment.  Let  the  reader  consider  the  state  of  the  South 
since  the  close  of  the  war,  growing  constantly  worse,  and  culminating  in  the  wide- 
spread horrors  of  organized  secret  murder  by  the  Ku-Klux,  and  then  say  whether 
this  lawlessness  would  have  had  free  course  if  the  principles  and  policy  here  so  ear- 
nestly pressed  had  been  carried  out  ?] 

The  House  had  under  consideration  the  following  resolution  :  — 

Resolved  (as  the  deliberate  judgment  of  this  House),  That  the  speedy  trial 
of  Jefferson  Davis,  either  by  a  civil  or  military  tribunal,  for  the  crime  of 
treason  and  the  other  crimes  of  which  he  stands  charged,  and  his  prompt 
execution,  if  found  guilty,  ai*e  imperatively  demanded  by  the  people  of  the 
United  States,  in  order  that  treason  may  be  adecmately  branded  by  the  nation, 
traitors  made  infamous,  and  the  repetition  of  their  crimes,  as  far  as  possible, 
be  prevented. 

Mr.  Julian  said  : 

Mr.  Speaker,  —  In  demanding  the  punishment  of  the  chief  rebel 
conspirators  I  beg  not  to  be  misunderstood.  I  do  not  ask  for 
vengeance.  I  feel  sure  there  is  no  man  in  the  country,  however 
intense  his  loyalty,  who  would  inflict  the  slightest  unnecessary 
suffering,  or  any  form  of  cruelty,  upon  even  the  most  flagitious  of 
the  confederate  leaders.  What  the  nation  desires,  and  all  it  asks, 
is  the  ordinary  administration  of  justice  against  the  most  extraor- 
dinary national  criminals.  The  treason  spun  from  their  brains, 
and  deliberately  fashioned  into  the  bloody  warp  and  woof  of  a 
four  years'  war,  and  the  winding-sheet  of  a  half  million  of  men, 
ought  to  be  branded  by  the  nation  as  a  crime.  It  ought  to  be 
made  "  odious  "  and  "  infamous."  The  Constitution  provides  for 
its  punishment ;  and  I  am  just  as  unwilling  to  see  the  Constitu- 
tion set  aside  and  made  void  in  this  respect,  in  the  interest  of 
vanquished  rebel  leaders,  as  I  was  to  see  it  trampled  under  foot 
by  their  armed  legions   while   the  war  continued.      Indeed,  the 


320      THE  PUNISHMENT  OF  REBEL  LEADERS. 

punishment  of  these  leaders  is  a  necessary  part  of  the  logic  of 
their  infernal  enterprise,  and  without  it  the  rebellion  itself,  in- 
stead of  being  effectually  crushed,  must  find  a  fresh  incentive  to 
renew  its  life  in  its  impunity,  from  the  just  consequences  of  its 
guilt.  It  will  not  do  to  say  these  leaders  have  been  sufficiently 
punished  already,  by  the  failure  of  their  treason,  the  loss  of  their 
coveted  power,  and  their  humiliation,  poverty,  and  disgrace.  Kin- 
dred arguments  would  empty  our  jails  and  penitentiaries,  and 
make  the  administration  of  criminal  justice  everywhere  a  farce. 
The  way  of  all  transgressors  is  hard  ;  but  this  hardship  cannot 
justify  society  in  failing  to  protect  itself  by  fitly  chastising  its  ene- 
mies. Justice  to  the  nation  whose  life  has  been  attempted,  and  to 
the  assassins  who  made  the  attempt,  is  the  great  demand  of  the 
hour. 

And  here  again,  Mr.  Speaker.  I  hope  I  shall  be  understood.  In 
pleading  for  justice  I  mean  of  course  public  justice,  which  seeks 
the  prevention  of  crime  by  making  an  example  of  the  criminal. 
Human  laws  do  not  pretend  to  fathom  the  real  moral  guilt  of 
offenders.  They  have  no  power  to  do  this.  Their  sole  aim  is  the  pre- 
vention of  crime.  They  have  nothing  to  do  with  that  retributive 
justice  which  graduates  the  punishment  of  each  transgressor  by 
the  exact  measure  of  his  guilt.  To  the  great  Searcher  of  all  hearts 
belongs  this  prerogative,  while  society,  acting  through  government 
as  its  agent,  and  having  an  eye  single  to  its  own  protection,  must 
deal  with  its  criminals.  This,  sir,  is  my  reply  to  the  plea  often 
urged  that  we  should  not  hang  the  rebel  leaders,  because  we  can- 
not  also  hang  the  leading  sympathizers  of  the  Northern  States  who 
are  perhaps  more  guilty.  The  government  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  question  of  degrees  of  moral  guilt  or  blameworthiness,  either  in 
the  North  or  the  South.  Its  concern  is  with  the  nation's  enemies 
whose  overt  acts  of  treason  have  made  them  amenable  to  the  laws, 
and  whose  punishment  should  be  made  a  terror  to  evil  doers  here- 
after. The  fact  that  our  power  of  punishment  cannot  reach  all 
who  are  guilty,  including  many  men  in  the  loyal  States  who  richly 
deserve  the  halter,  is  no  reason  whatever  for  allowing  those  to  go 
unwhipped  who  are  properly  within  the  reach  of  public  justice. 

And  the  same  reasoning  applies  to  the  argument  sometimes 
urged  against  all  punishment,  founded  on  the  numbers  who  would 
fairly  be  liable  to  suffer.  The  question  is  frequently  asked,  Would 
you  build  a  gallows  in  every  village  and  neighborhood  of  the 
South  ?  Would  you  shock  the  Christian  world  !>v  the  spectacle 
of  ten  thousand  gibbets,  and  the  hanging  of  all  who  have  been 


THE   PUNISHMENT   OF   REBEL   LEADERS.  821 

guilty  of  treason,  or  even  a  respectable  fraction  of  their  number  ? 
I  answer,  I  would  do  no  such  tiling.  Public  justice  and  the  high- 
est good  of  the  State  do  not  require  it.  I  would  simply  apply  the 
ordinary  rules  of  criminal  jurisprudence  to  the  question,  and  as  in 
other  conspiracies,  so  in  this  grand  one,  I  would  mete  out  the 
severest  punishment  to  the  ringleaders.  Most  undoubtedly  I  would 
give  them  a  constitutional  entertainment  on  the  gallows  ;  or  should 
the  number  of  ringleaders  be  too  great,  or  the  guilt  of  some  of 
them  be  less  flagrant  than  others,  perpetual  exile  might  be  substi- 
tuted. The  rebel  masses,  both  on  the  score  of  their  numbers  and 
their  qualified  guilt,  should  have  a  general  amnesty ;  but  by  no 
possible  means  would  I  spare  the  unmatched  villains  who  con- 
ceived the  bloody  project  of  national  dismemberment,  and  by  their 
devilish  arts  lured  into  their  horrid  service  the  ignorant  and  mis- 
guided people  of  their  section.  Whoever  may  escape  justice,  either 
North  or  South,  or  whatever  embarrassments  may  belong  to  the 
problem  of  punishment  at  the  end  of  this  stupendous  conflict,  noth- 
ing remains  so  perfectly  clear  and  unquestionable  as  the  duty  of 
the  nation  to  execute  the  great  malefactors  who  fashioned  to  their 
uses  all  the  genius  and  resources  of  the  South,  and  throughout 
the  entire  struggle  invoked  all  the  powers  of  hell  in  their  work  of 
national  destruction. 

Mr.  Speaker,  the  adequate  punishment  of  the  rebel  leaders  in- 
volves the  whole  question  of  the  rebellion  itself.  It  is  not  a  matter 
which  the  government  may  dispose  of  indifferently,  but  is  vital  to 
the  nation's  peace,  if  not  to  its  very  existence.  To  trifle  with  it 
is  to  trifle  with  public  justice  and  the  holy  cause  for  which  the 
country  has  been  made  to  bleed  and  suffer.  It  is  to  mock  our 
dead  heroes,  and  confess  our  own  pusillanimity  or  guilt.  It  is  to 
make  treason  respectable,  and  put  loyalty  under  the  ban.  It  is  to 
call  evil  good  and  good  evil ;  and  since  God  is  not  to  be  mocked, 
it  must  in  some  form  bring  down  upon  our  own  heads  the  retri- 
bution which  we  may  only  escape  by  enforcing  the  penal  laws  of 
the  nation  against  the  magnificent  felons  who  have  sought  its  life. 

Sir,  I  shall  take  it  for  granted  that  treason  is  a  crime,  and  not 
a  mere  accident  or  mistake.  In  this  most  frightful  and  desolating 
struggle  there  is  transcendent  and  unutterable  guilt ;  and  I  take 
it  for  granted  that  that  guilt  is  on  the  side  of  those  who  wantonly 
and  causelessly  took  up  arms  against  the  nation,  and  not  on  the 
side  of  those  who  fought  to  save  it  from  destruction.  Treason  is  a 
crime,  and  therefore  not  a  mere  difference  of  opinion  ;  a  crime, 
and  therefore  not  an  honest  mistake  of  judgment  about  the  right 

21 


322  THE   PUNISHMENT   OF   REBEL   LEADERS. 

of  a  State  to  secede  ;  a  crime,  and  therefore  not  a  mere  struggle 
of  the  South  for  independence  while  the  North  contended  fur  em- 
pire ;  a  crime,  and  therefore  not  a  mere  "  misapprehension  of  mis- 
guided men,"  as  some  of  our  Copperhead  journals  affirm  ;  a  crime, 
and  the  highest  of  all  crimes,  including  all  lesser  villainies,  and 
eclipsing  them  all,  in  its  heaven-daring  leap  at  the  nation's  throat ; 
and  therefore  those  who  withstood  it  by  arms  were  patriots  and 
heroes,  fighting  for  nationality  and  freedom,  against  rebels  whose 
sure  and  swift  punishment  should  be  made  a  warning  against  the 
repetition  of  their  deeds. 

Mr.  Speaker,  if  a  man  were  to  come  into  our  midst  and  per- 
suade us  that  treason  and  loyalty  are  about  the  same  thing  ;  that 
right  and  wrong,  good  and  evil,  virtue  and  vice,  are  convertible 
terms  ;  that  God  and  Satan  are  in  fact  the  same  personage,  under 
different  names,  and  that  it  matters  little  under  whose  banner  we 
fight ;  and  if  he  could  thus  enlist  us  in  the  work  of  uprooting  the 
foundations  of  government,  of  morals,  of  society,  of  everything 
held  sacred  among  men,  would  he  not  be  the  most  execrable  creat- 
ure in  the  universe  ?  If  he  could  indoctrinate  mankind  with  his 
theory  of  "  reconstruction,"  would  not  this  beautiful  earth  of  ours 
be  converted  into  a  first-class  hell,  with  the  devil  as  its  king?  Sir, 
you  dare  not  trifle  with  this  question  of  the  punishment  of  traitors. 
Theory  goes  before  practice.  Right  believing,  on  moral  or  polit- 
ical issues,  precedes  right  acting ;  and  you  touch  the  very  marrow 
of  the  rebellion  when  you  approach  the  question  of  the  punishment 
of  the  rebels.  Sir,  there  is  not  a  State  in  this  Union,  nor  a  civil- 
ized country  on  earth,  which  in  the  treatment  of  its  criminals 
sanctions  the  sickly  magnanimity  and  misapplied  humanity  of  this 
nation  in  dealing  with  its  leading  traitors.  No  civilized  govern- 
ment, in  my  judgment,  could  possibly  be  maintained  on  any  such 
loose  and  confounded  principles.  Crime  would  have  unchecked 
license,  and  public  justice  would  not  even  be  a  decent  sham.  No 
man  will  dispute  this,  or  fail  to  be  amazed  that,  in  dealing  with 
our  red-handed  traitors,  whose  crimes  are  certainly  unsurpassed 
in  history,  and  have  filled  the  land  with  sorrow  and  blood,. we  ut- 
terly decline  to  execute  against  them  the  very  Constitution  which 
they  sought  to  overturn  by  years  of  wdiolesale  rapine  and  murder. 

Sir,  this  fact  is  at  once  monstrous  and  startling.  We  seize  the 
murderer  who  only  takes  the  life  of  one  man,  indict  him,  convict 
him,  and  then  hang  him.  Undoubtedly  some  murderers  escape 
punishment  through  pardons  and  otherwise,  but  certainly  the  pen- 
alty of  death  is  inflicted  in  most  countries.    The  pirate,  who  boards 


THE   PUNISHMENT    OF   REBEL  LEADERS.  323 

a  vessel  on  the  sea,  and  murders  a  few  sailors,  is  "  chased  hy  the 
civilized  world  to  the  gallows."  The  plea  in  his  behalf  of  mag- 
nanimity to  a  vanquished  criminal  would  not  save  him,  and  his 
friends  would  scarcely  urge  it.  Public  justice  demands  the  sacri- 
fice of  his  life,  and  no  one  expects  him  to  be  spared  if  fairly  con- 
victed. But  Jefferson  Davis  is  no  ordinary  assassin  or  pirate.  He 
did  not  murder  a  single  citizen,  but  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men. 
He  did  not  board  a  ship  on  the  sea  and  murder  a  few  sailors,  but 
he  boarded  the  great  ship  of  State,  and  tried,  by  all  the  power  of 
his  evil  genius,  to  sink  fyer,  cargo  and  crew,  with  the  hopes  of  the 
world  forever,  into  the  abyss  of  eternal  night,  i^nd  is  not  his 
guilt  as  much  greater  than  that  of  an  ordinary  assassin  or  pirate  as 
the  life  of  a  great  republic  is  greater  than  the  life  of  one  man  ? 
Was  not  each  one  of  these  leaders  a  national  assassin,  aiming  his 
bloody  dagger  at  the  country's  vitals,  and  is  not  his  guilt  multi- 
plied by  the  millions  whose  interests  were  imperiled  ?  And  shall 
justice  only  be  defied  by  the  world's  grandest  villains  and  outlaws, 
and  Mercy  defile  herself  by  taking  them  into  her  embrace  ? 

Mr.  Speaker,  Jefferson  Davis  was  a  favored  child  of  the  Repub- 
lic. He  had  been  educated  at  the  nation's  expense,  and  upon  him 
had  been  lavished  the  honors  and  emoluments  of  office.  He  owed 
his  country  nothing  but  gratitude  and  fidelity,  and  no  man  under- 
stood these  obligations  better  than  himself.  Again  and  again  he 
had  asked  his  Maker  to  witness  that  he  would  be  faithful  to  the 
Constitution,  which  at  the  time  he  was  plotting  to  destroy.  Long 
years  before  the  rebellion  he  had  been  inoculating  the  public  opin- 
ion of  the  South  with  the  poison  of  his  heresies,  and  secretly 
hatching  his  treason  in  the  foul  atmosphere  which  he  helped  to 
create.  His  perfidy  was  most  cold-blooded,  deliberate,  and  pre- 
meditated. In  order  to  blast  the  government  of  his  fathers,  and 
establish  upon  its  ruins  a  confederacy  with  slavery  as  its  corner- 
stone, he  has  ruthlessly  wrapped  his  country  in  fire  and  blood. 
He  has  wantonly  destroyed  the  lives  of  more  than  two  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  soldiers,  who  gloriously  perished  in  resisting 
his  treason  in  arms.  He  has  maimed  and  crippled  for  life  more 
than  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  more.  He  has  duplicated 
these  atrocities  in  his  own  section  of  the  Union.  He  has  organ- 
ized  grand  conspiracies  in  the  North  and  Northwest  to  lay  in 
rapine  and  blood  the  towns  and  cities  and  plantations  of  the  whole 
loyal  portion  of  the  land.  He  has  put  to  death,  by  the  slow  tor- 
ture of  starvation  in  rebel  prisons,  sixty  thousand  brave  men  who 
went  forth   to  peril  their  lives  in  saving    the   country  from   his 


324  THE   PUNISHMENT   OF   REBEL   LEADERS. 

devilish  crusade  against  it.  He  has  deliberately  sought  to  intro- 
duce into  the  United  States  and  to  nationalize  among  us  pestilence, 
in  the  form  of  yellow  fever  ;  an  enterprise  which,  had  it  succeeded, 
would  have  startled  the  very  heavens  above  us  with  the  agony 
and  sorrow  it  would  have  lavished  upon  the  land.  He  stands 
charged  by  the  government  with  the  murder  of  the  President  of 
the  United  States,  and  that  charge,  as  I  am  well  assured,  is  amply 
verified  by  proofs  which  will  very  soon  be  given  to  the  public,  and 
awaken  a  stronger  and  sterner  demand  for  his  punishment.  He 
has  instigated  the  burning  of  our  hotels.  He  has  planted  infernal 
machines  in  the  tracks  of  his  armies.  He  has  poisoned  our  wells. 
He  has  murdered  our  wounded  soldiers.  He  has  made  drinking 
cups  of  their  skulls  and  jewelry  of  their  bones.  He  has  spawned 
upon  the  world  atrocities  so  monstrous  as  to  defy  all  definition,  and 
which  nothing  but  the  hot  incubation  of  the  slave  power,  as  the 
ripe  fruit  of  its  two  hundred  years  of  diabolism,  could  have 
warmed  into  life.  Sir,  he  has  done  everything,  by  the  help  of  his 
confederates,  that  an  incarnate  demon  could  do  to  let  loose  "  the 
whole  contagion  of  hell,"  and  convert  his  native  land  into  one 
grand  refuge  of  devils. 

Mr.  Speaker,  the  pardon  of  a  criminal  so  transcendently  guilty 
.would  be  an  act  in  itself  strongly  partaking  of  treason  against  the 
nation.  It  would  be  at  once  a  monstrous  denial  and  a  frightful 
mockery  of  justice.  Do  you  plead  for  mercy  to  the  great  confed- 
erate assassin  ?  I  refer  that  plea  to  the  Father  of  Mercies,  who, 
I  believe,  only  pardons  on  condition  of  repentance  ;  and  as  yet  I 
have  heard  of  no  rebel  leader  who  even  professes  penitence  for 
his  crimes.  Sir,  I  repudiate,  as  counterfeit,  the  mercy  which  can 
only  be  exercised  by  trampling  justice  under  our  feet,  while  it  for- 
gets both  justice  and  mercy  to  the  millions  who  have  been  made 
to  mourn  through  stricken  lives  by  the  human  monsters  who 
plunged  our  peaceful  country  into  war.  The  loyal  people  of  the 
nation  demand  that  they  be  dealt  with  as  criminals.  For  m}7self, 
I  would  not  have  a  civil  trial  for  the  leader  of  a  belligerent  power, 
which  has  maintained  a  public  war  against  us  for  years.  The 
nation  cannot  afford  to  submit  the  question  of  the  right  of  a  State 
to  secede  to  a  jury  of  twelve  men  in  one  of  the  rebel  States,  and 
a  majority  of  them  traitors,  under  an  implied  alternative  that  if 
they  fail  to  convict  the  government  itself  would  stand  convicted 
of  half  a  million  murders.  After  the  nation  has  established  its 
right  to  exist  by  a  four  years'  war,  it  cannot  put  that  right  on  trial 
by  a  jury  of  its  conquered  enemies,  or  any  earthly  tribunal.     Sir, 


THE   PUNISHMENT   OF   REBEL   LEADERS.  325 

let  Jefferson  Davis  be  tried  by  a  military  court,  as  he  should  have 
been,  promptly,  at  the  time  other  and  smaller  offenders  were  dealt 
with  a  year  ago.  Let  him  have  the  compliment  of  a  formal 
inquiry  to  determine  what  the  whole  world  already  knows,  that  he 
is  immeasurably  guilty.  And  when  that  guilt  is  pronounced  let 
the  government  erect  a  gallows,  and  hang  him  in  the  name  of  the 
Most  High.  I  put  aside  mercy  on  the  one  hand,  and  vengeance 
on  the  other,  and  the  simple  claim  I  assert,  in  the  nation's  behalf, 
is  justice.  In  the  name  of  half  a  million  soldiers  who  have  gone 
before  their  Maker  as  witnesses  against  "  the  deep  damnation  of 
their  taking  off;"  in  the  name  of  our  living  soldiers,  who  have* 
waded  through  seas  of  fire  in  deadly  conflict  with  rebels  in  arms ; 
in  the  name  of  the  Republic,  whose  life  has  only  been  saved  by 
the  precious  offering  of  multitudes  of  her  most  idolized  children ; 
in  the  name  of  the  great  future,  with  its  procession  of  countless 
generations  of  men,  whose  fate  to-day  swings  in  the  balance, 
awaiting  the  example  you  are  to  make  of  treason,  I  demand  the 
execution  of  Jefferson  Davis.  The  gallows  is  the  symbol  of  in- 
famy throughout  the  civilized  world,  and  no  criminal  ever  earned 
a  clearer  right  to  be  crowned  with  its  honors. 

Sir,  I  ask  why  the  Constitution  should  be  mocked  when  it  de- 
mands his  life  ?  What  right  have  the  authorities  of  the  govern- •• 
ment  to  cheat  the  halter  out  of  his  neck  ?  Not  for  all  the  honors 
and  offices  of  this  nation,  not  for  all  the  gold  and  glory  of  the 
world,  -would  I  spare  him  if  in  my  power  ;  for  I  would  expect  the 
ghosts  of  three  hundred  thousand  murdered  soldiers  to  haunt  my 
poor  cowardly  life  to  the  grave.  As  I  have  said  already,  the  pun- 
ishment of  the  rebel  conspirators  is  a  necessary  part  of  the  work 
of  suppressing  the  rebellion.  Their  treason  was  deliberately  aimed 
at  the  cause  of  free  government  on  earth,  and  they  are  justly 
to  be  classed  among  the  guiltiest  wretches  whose  crimes  ever 
drenched  the  earth  in  blood.  Every  one  of  them  should  have  a 
felon's  death.  The  grave  of  every  one  of  them  should  be  made  a 
grave  of  infamy,  and  the  cause  they  served  should  be  pilloried  by 
all  the  ages  to  come.  Sir,  if  you  discharge  the  confederate  chiefs 
because  of  the  very  magnitude  of  their  work  of  carnage,  you  offer 
a  public  license  to  treason  hereafter.  You  say  to  turbulent  and 
seditious  spirits  everywhere  that  they  have  full  liberty,  when  it 
may  suit  their  convenience,  to  levy  war  against  the  nation,  and 
that  while  it  may  lead  their  deluded  followers  to  wholesale 
slaughter,  they  shall  be  allowed  to  escape.  You  say  that  although 
the  nation  participated  in  the  hanging  of  John  Brown  as  a  traitor, 


326      THE  PUNISHMENT  OF  REBEL  LEADERS. 

for  the  crime  of  loving  liberty  "  not  wisely,  but  too  well,"  that 
same  nation,  which  has  copied  John  Brown's  example  in  emanci- 
pating slaves  by  military  power,  shall  turn  loose  upon  society  the 
hideous  monster  who  waged  war  to  establish  and  eternize  a  mighty 
slave  empire  on  the  ruins  of  our  free  institutions.  And  you  speak 
it  in  the  ear  of  the  nations  as  your  deliberate  estimate  of  the  value 
of  free  government,  whose  very  life  is  the  breath  of  the  people, 
that  the  bloody  conspirator  who  seeks  to  destroy  it  by  the  hand  of 
Avar  is  undeserving  of  punishment,  and  consequently  innocent  of 
crime. 

Mr.  Speaker,  can  we,  dare  we,  hope  for  the  favor  of  God  in 
thus  confounding  the  distinction  between  right  and  wrong,  between 
treason  and  loyalty,  and  forgetting  that  government  is  a  divine 
ordinance,  whose  authority  can  only  be  maintained  by  enforcing 
obedience  to  its  mandates  ?  I  speak  earnestly,  because  I  feel 
deeply,  on  this  question  of  the  punishment  of  leading  traitors.  The 
grand  peril  of  the  hour  comes  from  the  mistake  of  the  government 
on  this  point.  During  the  war  our  deserters  and  bounty-jumpers 
were  executed.  Our  brave  boys,  overcome  by  weariness,  who  fell 
asleep  at  their  posts  as  sentinels,  were  shot.  A  year  ago  the  mis- 
erable tools  of  Davis  and  Lee,  selected  for  their  infernal  deeds 
because  of  their  known  fitness  to  perform  them,  were  summarily 
tried  and  hung.  But  in  no  solitary  instance  has  treason  yet  been 
dealt  with  as  a  crime.  Pardon,  pardon,  pardon,  has  been  the  order 
of  the  day,  as  if  the  government  desired  to  make  haste  to  apolo- 
gize for  its  mistake  in  fighting  traitors,  and  wished  to  reinstate 
itself  in  their  good  opinion.  Beccaria,  in  his  celebrated  "Essay  on 
Crimes  and  Punishments,"  says  that  "  clemency  is  a  virtue  which 
belongs  to  the  legislator,  and  not  to  the  executor  of  the  laws  ;  a 
virtue  which  ought  to  shine  in  the  Code,  and  not  in  private  judg- 
ment. To  show  mankind  that  crimes  are  sometimes  pardoned,  and 
that  punishment  is  not  the  necessary  consequence,  is  to  nourish  the 
flattering  hope  of  impunity,  and  is  the  cause  of  their  considering 
every  punishment  inflicted  as  an  act  of  injustice  and  oppression. 
The  prince,  in  pardoning,  gives  up  the  public  security  in  favor  of 
an  individual,  and  by  ill-judged  benevolence  proclaims  a  public  act 
of  impunity." 

Dr.  Lieber  says,  that  "  every  pardon  granted  upon  insufficient 
grounds  becomes  a  serious  offense  against  society,  and  he  that 
grants  it  is,  in  justice,  answerable  for  the  offenses  which  the  offender 
may  commit,  and  the  general  injury  done  to  political  morality  by 
undue  interference  with  the  law."     With  these  wise  and  just  sen- 


THE   PUNISHMENT   OF   REBEL   LEADERS.  327 

timents  the  President  of  the  United  States,  on  accepting  his  high 
office,  perfectly  agreed.  He  declared  that  mercy  to  the  individual 
is  often  cruelty  to  the  State.  He  said,  that  "  robbery  is  a  crime, 
murder  is  a  crime,  treason  is  a  crime,  and  crime  must  be  punished." 
He  said,  that  "  treason  must  be  made  odious  ,and  traitors  impover- 
ished," and  he  reiterated  and  multiplied  these  declarations  on  very 
many  occasions  which  were  offered  him  for  weeks  and  months  fol- 
lowing his  inauguration.  He  repeatedly  referred,  approvingly,  to 
his  past  record,  covering  declarations  in  favor  of  hanging  the  lead- 
ing traitors,  in  favor  of  dividing  up  their  great  plantations  into 
small  farms  for  honest  and  industrious  men,  without  regard  to  color, 
and  in  favor  of  breaking  up  the  great  aristocracy  of  the  South, 
and  compelling  the  rebels  to  "  take  the  back  seats  in  the  work  of 
reconstruction."  For  a  season  the  whole  loyal  country  was  elec- 
trified by  the  clear  ring  of  his  words,  while  rebels  were  as  com- 
pletely palsied  and  dumb.  They  understood  the  new  President 
quite  as  little  as  his  loyal  friends.  They  expected  no  quarter,  and 
studiously  sought  their  pleasure  in  the  will  of  the  Executive.  They 
would  have  assented  gladly  to  any  terms  or  conditions  of  recon- 
struction dictated  by  him,  including  even  negro  suffrage.  Having 
staked  all  on  the  issues  of  war  and  lost,  they  felt  that  they  were 
entitled  only  to  such  rights  as  the  conqueror  might  see  fit  to 
impose. 

Sir,  this  golden  season  was  sinned  away  by  the  President,  and 
that  systematic  recreancy  to  his  pledges  and  record  which  has 
marked  his  subsequent  career,  has  brought  the  country  into  the 
most  fearful  peril.  The  responsibility  is  upon  him,  and  it  must  be 
measured  by  the  magnificent  opportunity  which  the  situation  af- 
forded him  for  an  easy  solution  of  our  national  difficulties,  and  at 
the  same  time  a  solid  and  permanent  reconstruction  of  the  South. 
"  No  important  political  movement,"  says  a  famous  English  writer, 
"  was  ever  obtained  in  a  period  of  tranquillity.  If  the  efferves- 
cence of  the  public  mind  is  suffered  to  pass  away  without  effect,  it 
would  be  absurd  to  expect  from  languor  what  enthusiasm  has  not 
obtained.  If  radical  reform  is  not,  at  such  a  moment,  procured, 
all  partial  changes  are  evaded  and  defeated  in  the  tranquillity  which 
succeeds."  These  are  suggestive  and  solemn  words,  and  the  re- 
flection is  a  very  sad  one  that  the  nation  to-clay  would-  have  been 
saved  and  blest  if  the  President  had  heeded  them.  He  disobeyed 
the  divine  command  to  "  execute  justice  in  the  morning,"  and  did 
not  even  remember  the  heathen  maxim, that  "the  gods  themselves 
cannot  save  those  who  neglect  opportunities." 


328  THE   PUNISHMENT   OF   REBEL   LEADERS. 

Sir,  while  I  dislike  the  occupation  of  an  alarmist,  I  must  say 
that  I  have  seen  few  darker  seasons  than  the  present  since  the  first 
battle  of  Bull  Run.  The  President  has  not  kept  the  faith.  He 
has  not  favored  the  hanging  of  a  single  rebel  leader.  He  has  not 
made  treason  infamous,  nor  impoverished  traitors.  He  has  not 
favored  the  confiscation  of  rebel  estates,  and  their  distribution 
among  the  poor.  He  has  not  required  traitors  to  take  the  back 
seats  in  the  work  of  reconstruction.  He  has  not  cooperated  with 
Congress  in  placing  the  governing  power  of  the  South  and  of  the 
nation  in  the  hands  of  loyal  men.  He  has  not  shown  himself  the 
"  Moses  "  of  our  loyal  colored  millions  in  leading  them  out  of  their 
grievous  bondage.  He  has  done  the  opposite  of  all  these.  The 
"  Richmond  Times,"  the  leading  organ  of  treason  in  Virginia,  says 
that  "  in  his  course  toward  the  mass  of  those  who  supported  the 
Southern  Confederacy  the  President  has  been  singularly  magnani- 
mous and  wisely  lenient.  Nine  tenths  of  those  who  for  four  years, 
with  unparalleled  gallantry  upheld  the  confederacy,  have  long 
since  been  unconditionally  pardoned.  The  cabinet  officers  who 
counseled  the  president  of  the  confederacy,  the  congressmen  who 
enacted  those  stringent  conscript  and  imprisonment  laws  which 
kept  up  our  armies,  and  many  distinguished  generals  of  the  con- 
federate armies,  have  either  been  formally  pardoned,  or  been 
released  upon  parole,  and  no  one  dreams  that  they  will  ever  be 
molested  in  person  or  estate.  The  military  bastiles  of  the  country, 
with  one  exception,  have  long  since  been  thrown  open,  and  the 
distinguished  confederate  officers  who  were  confined  in  them  have 
been  restored  to  their  friends  and  families."  And  these  Virginia 
traitors  who  thus  damn  our  President  by  their  encomiums  openly 
demand  the  unconditional  release  of  Jefferson  Davis  from  prison. 
Judging  the  President  by  the  logic  of  his  policy  thus  far,  the 
demand  will  be  complied  with.  When  he  decided,  nearly  a  year 
ago,  against  the  trial  of  Davis  by  a  military  court,  he  virtually 
decided  that  his  treason  should  go  unpunished  ;  for  no  jury  of 
Southern  rebels  would  ever  find  a  verdict  of  guilty,  and  the  trial 
itself  would  only  be  an  insult  to  the  nation.  Jefferson  Davis,  I 
doubt  not,  is  to  be  restored  to  his  family  and  friends,  and  the  argu- 
ment of  consistency  demands  it  at  the  hands  of  the  President. 

Robert  E.  Lee,  whose  spared  life  has  outraged  the  honest  claims 
of  the  gallows  ever  since  his  surrender,  is  running  at  large,  per- 
fectly unmolested  and  safe  from  all  harm.  Black  with  treason,  per- 
jury, and  murder,  guiltier  by  far  than  the  Christless  wretch  who 
obeyed  his  orders  in  starving  our  soldiers  at  Andersonville,  he  goes 


THE   PUNISHMENT   OF   REBEL   LEADERS.  329 

his  way  in  peace,  while  the  government,  in  this  monstrous  and 
appalling  fact,  confesses  to  the  world  that  treason  is  unworthy  of 
its  notice.  He  is  president  of  a  Virginia  college,  and  teacher  of 
her  youth.  He  visits  Washington,  and  tenders  his  advice  to  our 
public  men  about  the  work  of  restoring  the  Union.  He  goes  before 
the  reconstruction  committee  and  gives  his  testimony,  as  if  an  oath 
could  take  any  possible  hold  upon  his  seared  conscience  ;  and  all 
that  can  be  said  is,  that  his  unpunished  crimes  are  doing  precisely 
as  much  to  make  the  government  infamous,  as  the  government 
itself  has  done  to  make  those  crimes  respectable.  The  Legislature 
of  Virginia  indorses  him  as  a  fit  man  for  governor,  and  the  cham- 
pions of  this  proposition  visit  our  Republican  President,  laud  his 
principles  and  policy,  and  take  the  front  seats  in  the  house  of  his 
friends. 

The  vice-president  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  is  likewise  at 
large,  and  has  been  elected  a  Senator  in  Congress  from  his  State. 
He  also  visits  Washington,  and  gives  his  testimonj^  before  the  joint 
committee  of  fifteen.  Like  the  other  leading  traitors  he  very  nat- 
urally "  accepts  the  situation,"  because  he  could  not  do  otherwise, 
but  he  shows  not  the  smallest  token  of  penitence,  says  the  rebels 
were  in  the  right,  and  seems  wholly  unconscious  of  his  real  char- 
acter as  simply  an  unhung  traitor,  whose  advice  and  opinions  we 
shall  only  accept  at  their  value.  Leading  traitors  are  not  only  par- 
doned by  wholesale,  but  they  hold  nearly  all  the  places  of  power 
and  profit  in  the  South.  They  are  made  governors,  judges,  post- 
masters, revenue  officers,  and  are  likewise  frequently  chosen  to 
represent  their  cause  in  Congress  ;  and  the  President,  our  distin- 
guished Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  and  the  Postmaster  General, 
have  all  openly  trampled  under  their  feet  the  law  of  Congress 
requiring  a  test  oath,  in  order  that  rebels  might  fill  these  offices, 
and  on  the  false  pretense  that  loyal  men  could  not  be  found  quali- 
fied to  fill  them  in  a  country  wdiich  furnished  more  than  forty 
thousand  loyal  white  soldiers  during  the  war.  As  might  naturally 
be  expected  under  this  system  of  reconstruction,  loyal  men  are 
more  unsafe  in  the  revolted  districts  now  than  they  were  before 
the  war,  while  the  condition  of  the  negroes  in  very  many  localities 
is  more  pitiably  deplorable  than  that  of  their  former  slavery.  So 
intense  and  wide-spread  is  the  feeling  of  hostility  to  the  Union  in 
these  regions  that  loyalty  is  branded  as  both  a  crime  and  a  dis- 
grace, while  even  Wilkes  Booth  is  regarded  as  a  martyr,  and  his 
pictures  hang  in  the  parlors  of  "  Southern  gentlemen  "  whose  chil- 
dren are  called  by  his  name. 


330  THE   PUNISHMENT  OF   REBEL  LEADERS. 

Nor  am  I  surprised  at  the  audacity  of  the  rebel  leaders.  Neither 
do  I  complain,  or  blame  them.  They  do  not  disguise  their  real 
character  and  opinions,  because  they  have  been  made  sure  of  the 
executive  favor.  With  the  President  resolutely  on  the  side  of 
Congress  in  this  crisis,  a  very  different  exhibition  of  feeling  and 
policy  would  have  been  developed  in  the  South.  The  danger  now 
at  our  doors  would  never  have  appeared.  The  prospect  of  another 
bloody  war  to  complete  the  work  which  we  supposed  already  ac- 
complished would  never  have  alarmed  the  country.  The  President, 
at  the  end  of  a  conflict  of  four  years,  has  deserted  the  loyal  mill- 
ions who  crushed  the  rebel  cause,  and  joined  himself  to  that  very 
cause  which  is  now  borrowing  new  life  from  the  fertilizing  sun- 
shine  of  his  favor,  reasserting  its  old  heresies,  and  renewing  its 
treasonable  demands.  This  is  at  once  the  root  and  source  of  our 
present  national  troubles,  the  prophecy  and  parent  of  whatever 
calamity  may  come.  He  not  only  opposes  the  will  of  the  nation, 
the  policy  of  the  nation,  as  expressed  through  Congress,  but  he 
brands  as  traitors  before  a  rebel  mob  leading  and  representative 
men  in  both  Houses,  who  are  as  guiltless  of  treason  as  the  great 
majority  with  whom  they  act.  Not  content  with  the  good  fellow- 
ship of  the  men  who  began  the  war  and  fought  us  with  matchless 
desperation  to  the  end,  he  unites  with  them  in  branding  loyalty  it- 
self as  treason,  while  he  employs  the  power  and  patronage  of  his 
high  office  in  rewarding  his  minions,  and  opposing  the  very  men 
who  made  him  their  standard-bearer  along  with  Abraham  Lincoln, 
in  the  faith  that  his  loyalty  was  unselfish  and  sincere.  In  fact, 
every  phase  of  the  presidential  policy,  as  latterly  displayed,  con- 
founds the  difference  between  loyal  and  disloyal  men,  and  gives  aid 
and  comfort  to  the  rebels  by  mitigating  or  removing  the  just  con- 
sequences of  their  crimes. 

Mr.  Speaker,  this  policy,  utterly  fatal  to  the  nation's  peace,  as  I 
have  shown,  must  be  abandoned.  The  government  cannot  wholly 
undo  the  mistakes  of  the  past,  but  it  can  do  much  for  the  future, 
and  save  the  loyal  cause,  if  the  people  who  see  the  threatened 
danger  will  set  themselves  to  work  so  resolutely  as  to  compel  a 
change.  In  God's  name  let  this  be  done.  Let  the  people  speak, 
for  the  power  is  in  their  hands,  and  if  faithful  now,  as  they  proved 
themselves  during  the  war,  justice  will  prevail.  Let  them  thunder 
it  in  the  ears  of  the  President  that  the  nation  cannot  be  saved,  nor 
the  fruits  of  our  victory  gathered,  if  in  the  settlement  of  this 
bloody  conflict  with  treason  right  and  wrong  are  confounded,  and 
public  justice  trampled  down.     This  is  the  duty  of  the  loyal  mill- 


THE   PUNISHMENT   OF   REBEL   LEADERS.         •     331 

ions,  and  here  lies  the  danger  of  the  hour.  It  is  just  as  impossi- 
ble for  the  country  to  prosper  if  it  shall  sanction  the  present  policy 
of  the  Executive,  as  it  is  for  a  man  to  violate  a  law  of  his  physical 
being  and  escape  the  consequences.  The  demands  of  justice  are 
as  inexorable  as  the  demands  of  natural  law  in  the  material  world  ; 
and  the  moral  distinctions  which  God  himself  has  established  can- 
not be  slighted  with  the  least  possible  impunity  by  individuals  or 
nations.  There  is  a  difference,  heaven-wide,  between  fighting  for 
a  slave  empire  and  fighting  for  freedom  and  the  universal  rights  of 
man.  The  cause  of  treason  and  the  cause  of  loyalty  are  not  the 
same.  Perjury  is  not  as  honorable  as  keeping  a  man's  oath.  The 
black  flag  of  slavery  and  treason  was  not  as  noble  a  standard  to 
follow  as  that  of  the  Stars  and  Stripes.  The  leading  traitors  of  the 
South  should  not  have  the  same  honorable  treatment  and  recogni- 
tion as  the  patriot  heroes  of  the  Union.  The  grandest  assassins 
and  cut-throats  of  history  should  not  defraud  the  gallows,  while  or- 
dinary murderers  are  hung.  Jefferson  Davis  should  not  have  the 
same  honorable  place  in  history  as  George  Washington.  Benedict 
Arnold  was  not  the  beau  ideal  of  a  patriot,  nor  was  Judas  Iscariot 
"  a  high-souled  gentleman  and  a  man  of  honor,"  nor  even  "  a  mis- 
guided citizen  of  his  country  who  engaged  in  a  mistaken  cause." 
The  green  mounds  under  which  sleep  our  slaughtered  heroes  are 
not  to  have  any  moral  comparison  with  the  graves  of  traitors.  The 
"  throng  of  dead,  led  by  Stonewall  Jackson,"  are  not  to  "  contrib- 
ute equally  with  the  noble  spirits  of  the  North  to  the  renown  of 
our  great  Republic."  Truth  and  falsehood,  right  and  wrong,  heaven 
and  hell,  are  not  mere  names  which  signify  nothing,  but  they  per- 
tain to  the  great  veracities  of  the  universe  ;  and  the  throne  of  God 
itself  is  immovable,  only  because  its  foundations  are  justice. 


RADICALISM   THE   NATION'S    HOPE. 

HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES,  JUNE  16,   1866. 

[At  this  date  the  course  of  events  had  forced  the  question  of  negro  suffrage  in  the 
South  upon  the  serious  consideration  of  Congress.  It  was  not  possible  longer  to 
evade  it,  and  the  path  of  duty  was  perfectly  plain.  The  timid  policy  of  Conservatism, 
which  still  stood  in  the  way,  called  forth  this  vigorous  plea  for  political  courage,  in 
applying  the  principles  of  radical  democracy  to  the  work  of  governing  the  States 
lately  in  revolt.] 

Mr.  Speaker,  —  The  conflict  going  on  to-day  between  Conserv- 
atism and  Radicalism  is  not  a  new  one.  It  only  presents  new 
phases,  and  more  decided  characteristics  in  its  progress  toward  a 
final  settlement.  These  elements  in  our  political  life  were  at  war 
long  years  prior  to  the  late  rebellion.  After  the  old  questions  con- 
cerning trade,  currency,  and  the  public  lands  had  ceased  to  be  the 
pivots  on  which  our  national  policy  turned,  and  were  only  nomi- 
nally in  dispute,  Conservatism  put  them  on  its  banner,  and  shouted 
for  them  as  the  living  issues  of  the  times,  while  intelligent  men 
everywhere  saw  that  the  real  and  sole  controversy  was  that  very 
question  of  slavery  which  the  leaders  of  parties  were  striving  so 
anxiously  to  keep  out  of  sight.  Conservatism  stubbornly  closed 
its  eyes  to  this  truth.  If  it  ever  took  the  form  of  Radicalism  it  was 
in  denouncing  the  agitation  of  the  subject.  It  believed  in  con- 
ciliation and  concession.  It  preached  the  gospel  of  compromise. 
Professing  hostility  to  slavery,  it  paraded  its  readiness  to  yield  up 
its  convictions  as  a  virtue.     Resistance  to  aggression  and  wrong  it 

DO  O 

branded  as  fanaticism  or  wickedness,  while  it  was  ever  ready  to 
purchase  peace  at  the  cost  of  principle.  This  policy  of  studiously 
deferring  to  the  demands  of  arrogance  and  insolence,  this  dominat- 
ing love  of  peace  and  cowardly  dread  of  conflict,  this  yielding,  and 
yielding,  and  yielding,  to  the  exactions  of  the  slave  interest,  nat- 
urally enough  fed  and  pampered  its  spirit  of  rapacity,  and  at  last 
armed  it  with  the  weapons  of  civil  war.  Such  will  be  the  unques- 
tioned and  unquestionable  record  of  history  ;  and  no  record  could 
be  more  blasting,  as  it  will  be  read  in  the  clear  light  of  the  future. 
To  us  belongs  the  privilege  of  taking  counsel  from  the  lesson  in 
dealing  with  the  yet  unsettled  problems  of  the  crisis. 


RADICALISM  THE  NATION'S  HOPE.  333 

But  Radicalism  assumed  a  directly  antagonistic  position.  It  did 
not  believe  in  conciliation  and  compromise.  It  did  not  believe 
that  a  powerful  and  steadily  advancing  evil  was  to  be  mastered 
by  submission  to  its  behests,  but  by  timely  and  resolute  resistance. 
The  Radicals,  under  whatever  peculiar  banner  they  rallied,  thought 
it  was  their  duty  to  take  time  by  the  forelock  ;  and  with  prophetic 
ears  they  heard  the  footfalls  of  civil  war  in  the  distance,  forewarned 
the  country  of  its  danger,  and  pointed  out  the  way  of  deliverance. 
In  the  ages  to  come  freedom  will  remember  and  cherish  them  as 
her  most  precious  jewels ;  for  had  they  been  seconded  in  their 
earnest  efforts  to  rouse  the  people  and  to  lay  hold  of  the  aggres- 
sions of  slavery  in  their  incipient  stages,  the  black  tide  of  Southern 
domination  which  has  since  inundated  the  land  might  have  been 
rolled  back,  and  the  Republic  saved  without  the  frightful  surgery 
of  war.  This  exalted  tribute  to  their  sagacity,  and  their  fidelity 
to  their  country,  will  be  the  sure  award  of  history  ;  and  its  lesson, 
like  that  of  Conservatism,  commends  itself  to  our  study. 

But  the  war  at  length  came,  and  with  it  came  the  same  conflict 
between  Conservatism  on  the  one  hand  and  Radicalism  on  the 
other.  Their  antagonisms  put  on  new  shapes,  but  were  as  per- 
fectly defined  as  before.  The  proof  of  this  is  supplied  by  facts  so 
well  known,  and  so  painfully  remembered  by  all  loyal  men,  that  I 
need  scarcely  refer  to  them.  Conservatism,  in  its  unexampled 
stupidity,  denied  that  rebels  in  arms  against  the  government  were 
its  enemies,  and  declared  them  to  be  only  misguided  friends.  The 
counsel  it  perpetually  volunteered  was  that  of  great  moderation 
and  forbearance  on  our  part  in  the  conduct  of  the  war.  It  denied 
that  slavery  caused  the  war,  or  should  in  any  wray  be  affected  by 
it.  It  insisted  that  slavery  and  freedom  were  "  twin  sisters  of  the 
Constitution,"  equally  sacred  in  its  sight,  and  equally  to  be  guarded 
and  defended  at  all  hazards.  Its  owlish  vision  failed  to  see  that 
two  civilizations  had  met  in  the  shock  of  deadly  conflict,  and  that 
slavery  at  last  must  perish.  Even  down  to  the  very  close  of  the 
contest,  when  the  dullest  minds  could  see  the  new  heavens  and  the 
new  earth  which  the  rebellion  had  ushered  in,  Conservatism  madly 
insisted  on  "  the  Constitution  as  it  is  and  the  Union  as  it  was." 
Its  idolized  party  leaders  and  its  great  military  heroes  were  all  men 
who  believed  in  the  divinity  of  slavery,  whose  hearts  were  there- 
fore on  the  side  of  the  rebellion,  and  whose  management  of  the 
war  gave  proof  of  it.  And  every  man  of  ordinary  sense  and  in- 
telligence knows  that  just  so  long  and  so  far  as  Conservative  coun- 
sels prevailed,  defeat  and  disaster  followed  in  our  steps,  and  that  if 


334  RADICALISM   THE   NATION'S   HOPE. 

these  counsels  had  not  been  abjured,  the  black  flag  of  treason  would 
have  been  unfurled  over  the  broken  columns  and  shattered  frag- 
ments of  our  republican  edifice.  Let  this  also  be  remembered  in 
digesting  a  policy  for  the  future. 

But  here,  again,  Radicalism  squarely  met  the  issue  tendered  by 
the  Conservatives.  That  slavery  caused  the  war  and  was  neces- 
sarily involved  in  its  fortunes  it  accepted  as  a  simple  truism.  Its 
theory  was  that  the  rebellion  was  slavery,  in  arms  against  the 
nation,  and  that  to  strike  it  was  to  strike  treason,  and  to  spare  it 
was  to  espouse  the  cause  of  the  rebels.  In  the  very  beginning  of 
the  conflict  Radicalism  comprehended  the  situation  and  the  duty. 
It  understood  the  foe,  utterly  scouted  the  idea  of  a  "  war  on  peace 
principles,"  and  demanded  the  employment  of  all  the  powers  of 
war  in  the  accomplishment  of  its  purpose.  It  understood  the  con- 
flict as  not  simply  a  struggle  to  save  the  Union,  but  a  grand  and 
final  battle  for  the  rights  of  man,  now  and  hereafter  ;  and  it  be- 
lieved that  God  would  never  smile  upon  our  endeavors  till  we  ac- 
cepted it  as  such.  Radicalism  therefore  demanded  the  repeal  of  all 
laws  which  had  been  enacted  to  uphold  and  fortify  slavery.  It 
demanded  the  arming  of  the  slaves  against  their  old  tyrants.  It 
demanded  emancipation  as  a  moral  and  a  military  necessity,  and  a 
policy  of  the  war  so  broadly  and  systematically  anti-slavery  as  to 
meet  the  rebel  power  in  the  full  sweep  of  its  remorseless  crusade 
against  us.  Its  trust  was  in  the  justice  of  our  cause  and  the  favor 
of  the  Almighty  ;  and  just  so  soon  as  the  government  turned 
away  from  its  Conservative  friends  and  joined  hands  with  Radical- 
ism, our  arms  were  crowned  with  victories,  which  followed  each 
other  till  the  rebel  power  lay  prostrate  at  our  feet. 

Rut,  Mr.  Speaker,  the  war  is  over.  So  at  least  we  are  informed 
by  the  President ;  and  with  the  glad  return  of  peace  comes  once 
more  the  same  issue  between  Conservatism  and  Radicalism,  and 
more  clearly  marked  than  ever  before.  Conservatism,  true  to  the 
Wic  which  made  it  the  allv  and  handmaid  of  treason  all  through 
the  war,  now  demands  the  indiscriminate  pardon  of  all  the  rebel 
leaders.  It  recognizes  the  revolted  States  as  still  in  the  Union,  in 
precisely  the  same  sense  as  are  the  loyal  States,  and  restored  to  all 
their  rights  as  completely  as  if  no  rebellion  had  happened.  It  op- 
poses any  constitutional  amendment  which  shall  deprive  the  rebels 
of  the  representation  of  the  freedmen  in  Congress,  who  have  no 
voice  as  citizens,  and  thus  sanctions  this  most  flagrant  outrage  upon 
justice  and  democratic  equality  in  the  interest  of  unrepentant 
traitors.    It  opposes  the  protection  of  the  millions  of  loyal  colored 


RADICALISM   THE   NATION'S   HOPE.  335 

people  of  the  South  through  the  agency  of  a  Freedmen's  Bureau, 
and  thus  hands  them  over  to  starvation,  and  scourgings,  and  tor- 
ture, by  their  former  masters.  It  opposes,  likewise,  the  Civil  Rights 
Bill,  which  seeks  to  protect  these  people  in  their  right  to  sue, 
to  testify  in  the  courts,  to  make  contracts,  and  to  own  property. 
It  opposes,  of  course,  with  all  bitterness,  the  policy  of  givincr  the 
freedmen  the  ballot,  which  "is  as  just  a  demand  as  governed  men 
ever  made  of  governing,"  and  should  be  accorded  at  once,  both  on 
the  score  of  policy  and  justice.  In  short,  it  seeks  to  make  void 
and  of  non-effect,  for  any  good  purpose,  the  sacrifice  of  more  than 
three  hundred  thousand  lives  and  three  thousand  millions  of  money, 
by  its  eager  service  of  the  heaven-defying  villains  who  causelessly 
brought  this  sacrifice  upon  the  nation. 

But  on  all  these  points  Radicalism  takes  issue.  It  holds  that 
treason  is  a  crime,  and  that  it  ought  to  be  punished.  While  it 
does  not  ask  for  vengeance,  it  demands  public  justice  against  some 
at  least  of  the  rebel  leaders.  It  deals  with  the  revolted  States  as 
outside  of  their  constitutional  relations  to  the  Union,  and  as  inca- 
pable of  restoring  themselves  to  it  except  on  conditions  to  be  pre- 
scribed by  Congress.  It  demands  the  immediate  reduction  of  rep- 
resentation in  the  States  of  the  South  to  the  basis  of  actual  voters, 
and  the  amendment  of  the  Constitution  for  that  purpose.  It  favors 
the  protection  of  the  colored  people  of  the  South,  through  the 
Freedmen's  Bureau  and  Civil  Rights  bills,  as  necessary  to  make 
effective  the  constitutional  amendment  abolishing  slavery.  And 
for  the  same  reason,  Radicalism,  when  not  smitten  by  unnatural 
fear  or  afflicted  by  policy,  demands  the  ballot  as  the  right  of  every 
colored  citizen  of  the  rebellious  States.  Such  have  been  the  issues 
between  Conservatism  and  Radicalism,  some  of  which  are  disposed 
of  by  time  ;  and  they  are  all  in  fact  side  issues,  save  the  grand 
and  all-comprehending  one  of  suffrage.  Let  this  be  settled  in  har- 
mony with  our  democratic  institutions,  and  all  else  will  be  added. 

And  in  dealing  with  this  problem,  Mr.  Speaker,  whose  counsel 
shall  we  follow  ?  Shall  we  be  guided  by  Conservatism,  which 
paved  the  way  for  the  rebellion  by  its  policy  of  concession  and 
compromise,  which  would  have  handed  the  country  over  to  the 
rebels  when  the  war  was  upon  us  if  its  policy  had  been  adhered 
to,  and  to-day  would  give  to  the  winds  the  fruits  of  our  victory  ? 
Or  shall  our  guide  be  that  same  Radicalism  which  would  have 
averted  the  rebellion  if  its  counsel  had  been  heeded,  which  alone 
saved  us  when  war  came,  and  now  asks  us  to  accept  its  inevitable 
locic  in  seeking  a  true  basis  of  peace  ?     Can  a  loyal  man  hesitate 


336  RADICALISM  THE  NATION'S   HOPE. 

in  his  answer  ?  Sir,  we  can  neither  stand  still  nor  take  any  back- 
ward step.  For  myself,  at  least,  I  shall  press  right  on  ;  and  my 
strong  faith  is  that  the  loyal  people  of  the  country  will  not  madly 
attempt  a  halt  in  that  grand  march  of  events  through  which  the 
hand  of  Providence  is  so  visibly  guiding  the  nation  to  liberty  and 
lasting  peace. 

Mr.  Speaker,  of  all  the  questions  pertaining  to  the  late  rebellion 
which  have  been  so  much  debated,  it  seems  to  me  none  could  be 
more  perfectly  simple  and  unembarrassed  than  that  of  giving  the 
ballot  to  the  freedmen  of  the  South.  This  would  be  conceded  at 
once,  if  it  were  possible  to  forget  the  institution  of  slavery,  and  the 
foul  legacy  of  prejudice  and  hate  which  it  has  bequeathed  to  us 
all.  I  believe  the  present  discussions  of  the  subject  and  our  gin- 
gerly reluctance  to  face  the  issue  squarely,  will  hereafter  be  set 
down  among  the  curiosities  of  American  politics.  Sir,  what  is  the 
proposition  ?  It  is  simply  to  extend  our  democratic  institutions 
over  the  States  recently  in  revolt,  which  have  been  overpowered 
by  our  arms,  and  are  now  subject  to  the  national  jurisdiction.  The 
mass  of  the  white  people  of  the  South,  including  those  who  have 
been  in  arms  against  the  government,  have  the  ballot ;  and  there 
is  no  pending  proposition  to  deprive  them  of  it.  But  we  imagine 
insuperable  difficulties  in  the  way  of  giving  it  to  the  colored  people, 
who  constitute  the  majority  in  several  States,  who  have  been  uni- 
versally loyal,  and  have  furnished  a  strong  body  of  soldiery  in  the 
war  for  the  Union.     Can  this,  indeed,  be  true  ? 

Alexander  Hamilton,  in  the  fifty-fourth  number  of  the  "  Federal- 
ist,'' speaking  of  the  slaves,  says  :  "  It  is  admitted  that  if  the  laws 
were  to  restore  the  rights  which  have  been  taken  away,  the  negroes 
could  no  longer  be  refused  an  equal  share  of  representation  with 
the  other  inhabitants."  Most  certainly  he  was  right.  Why  then 
shirk  the  question  ?  Would  we  do  so  if  these  colored  men  were 
white  ?  No  man  will  pretend  it.  Why  not  secure  the  ballot  to 
the  men  who  have  been  restored  to  their  rights  throuoh  the  treason 
of  their  masters?  "Liberty,  or  freedom,"  says  Dr.  Franklin, 
':  consists  in  having  an  actual  share  in  the  appointment  of  those 
who  frame  the  laws  and  who  are  to  be  the  guardians  of  every 
man's  life,  property,  and  peace  ;  for  the  all  of  one  man  is  as  dear 
to  him  as  the  all  of  another;  and  the  poor  man  has  an  equal  right, 
but  more  need,  to  have  representatives  in  the  Legislature  than  the 
rich  one."  And  he  goes  on  to  say :  "  That  they  who  have  no 
voice  nor  vote  in  the  electing  of  representatives  do  not  enjoy  lib- 
erty, but  are  absolutely  enslaved  to  those  who  have  votes,  and  to 


RADICALISM   THE  NATION'S   HOPE.  337 

their  representatives  ;  for  to  be  enslaved  is  to  have  governors 
whom  other  men  have  set  over  us,  and  be  subject  to  laws  made  by  the 
representatives  of  others,  without  having  had  representatives  of  our 
own  to  give  consent  in  our  behalf."  This,  in  different  words,  is  the 
doctrine  of  James  Otis,  that  "  taxation  without  representation  is 
tyranny,"  and  was  the  principle  on  which  our  revolutionary 
fathers  planted  themselves  in  resisting  British  despotism.  Shall 
we  shrink  from  it  to-day,  when  just  emerging  from  a  frightful  civil 
war,  caused  by  our  infidelity  to  the  rights  of  man  ?  Are  we  still 
to  love  the  rebels  so  tenderly  that  we  must  not  offend  them  by  a 
policy  of  equal  and  exact  justice  between  them  and  the  loyal  men 
who  resisted  their  devilish  crusade  against  the  national  life  ?  "  We 
hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident,  that  all  men  are  created 
equal ;  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  in- 
alienable rights,  among  which  are  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of 
happiness  ;  and  that  to  secure  these  rights  governments  are  insti- 
tuted among  men,  deriving  their  Just  powers  from  the  consent  of 
the  governed."  Do  we  still  doubt  these  truths,  thus  named  self- 
evident,  after  having  seen  them  written  down  in  fire  and  blood 
during  the  past  four  years  ?  Men  talk  eloquently  of  the  natural 
equality  of  all  men  and  the  sovereignty  of  the  popular  will.  Sir, 
if  we  are  not  hypocrites,  why  not  accept  these  principles  by  reduc- 
ing them  to  practice  everywhere  throughout  the  Republic  ?  If  all 
men  are  equal  in  their  inborn  rights,  every  man  has  the  right  to  a 
voice  in  the  governing  power ;  and  that  right  is  as  natural  as  the 
right  to  the  breath  of  his  nostrils.  It  is  not  a  privilege,  but  a  right, 
and  you  insult  republicanism  and  brand  the  great  Declaration  as 
a  lie,  when  you  dispute  it.  You  espouse  the  cause  of  absolutism 
at  once  ;  for  if  one  portion  of  the  people,  black  or  white,  can  de- 
prive another  of  their  rights,  the  whole  theory  of  American  democ- 
racy is  overturned.  That  wise  men,  in  Congress  and  out  of  Con- 
gress, should  deal  with  this  question  as  a  difficult  and  complicated 
one  seems  incredibly  strange.  The  very  horn-book  of  republican- 
ism settles  it ;  and  if  the  teachings  of  our  fathers  are  in  fact  to  be 
accepted,  and  the  poisonous  exhalations  of  slavery  shall  ever  be 
dispelled  from  the  minds  of  men,  a  disfranchised  citizen,  white  or 
colored,  innocent  of  crime,  will  become  an  unknown  anomaly. 
This  much  I  say  on  general  principles,  and  wholly  aside  from 
those  considerations  which  plead  imperatively  for  impartial  suffrage 
in  the  South  on  the  score  of  justice  and  gratitude  to  the  negro, 
the  peace  and  well-being  of  society,  and  the  stability  of  the  Union 

itself. 

22 


338  RADICALISM  THE  NATION'S   HOPE. 

But  our  power  over  the  subject  of  suffrage  in  the  States  lately 
in  revolt  is  disputed  ;  and  doubts  respecting  it  are  expressed  even 
by  the  joint  committee  of  fifteen,  in  their  elaborate  and  very  able 
report  just  given  to  the  public.  Sir,  I  never  hear  these  opinions 
and  doubts  uttered  without  unmingled  astonishment.  In  the  whole 
domain  of  politics  and  jurisprudence  a  proposition  cannot  be  found 
more  perfectly  beyond  dispute  than  that  Congress  can  prescribe 
the  qualifications  of  voters  in  the  States  that  rebelled  against  the 
national  authority,  and  have  been  subdued  by  our  arms.  I  no  not 
now  speak  of  the  power  conferred  in  the  clause  of  the  Constitu- 
tion making  it  the  right  and  duty  of  Congress  to  guarantee  a  re- 
publican form  of  government  to  every  State ;  though  I  believe  it 
clearly  confers  upon  us  the  authority  to  deal  with  the  question  of 
suffrage  in  all  the  States.  Nor  do  I  here  refer  to  the  constitutional 
amendment  abolishing  slavery,  and  giving  Congress  the  power,  by 
appropriate  legislation,  to  enforce  such  abolition  ;  though  I  hold  it 
to  be  perfectly  clear  that  under  this  clause  the  power  over  the 
ballot  is  given,  since  a  man  without  it,  according  to  the  principles 
of  radical  democracy  and  the  revolutionary  authorities  already 
referred  to,  is  a  slave  —  the  slave  of  society,  if  not  the  chattel  of 
an  individual  master.  I  waive  these  points,  and  rest  the  case 
solely  on  the  ground  of  the  authority  of  the  nation  to  do  what  it 
pleases  with  rebels  whose  revolt  became  a  stupendous  civil  war, 
and  was  crushed  by  the  power  of  war.  That,  sir,  is  the  impreg- 
nable ground  on  which  I  stand,  and  I  challenge  all  assailants. 
The  revolt  grew  in  its  proportions  till  it  became  a  civil,  territorial 
war.  We  blockaded  the  rebel  coast ;  we  exchanged  prisoners  ;  Ave 
conducted  the  conflict  according  to  the  laws  of  war  and  the  law 
of  nations.  The  rebels  became  public  enemies,  and  by  the  power 
of  our  resistless  hosts  we  conquered  them.  As  conquered  public 
enemies  their  rights  were  all  swept  away,  all  melted  in  the  fervent 
heat  of  their  devilish  treason  and  war.  Not  a  respectable  jurist  in 
the  Union  will  dispute  this  proposition,  for  the  principles  of  the 
law  of  nations  which  govern  the  conduct  of  a  civil  war  and  define 
the  rights  of  the  parties  to  it  are  precisely  those  which  pertain  to 
the  conduct  of  a  foreign  war.  If  this  is  not  the  settled  law  of 
nations,  settled  also  emphatically  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States,  then  nothing  is  settled,  and  nothing  is  capable  of 
settlement.  The  report  of  the  reconstruction  committee  already 
referred  to,  which  expresses  doubt  as  to  the  power  in  question,  as- 
serts that  "  within  the  limits  prescribed  by  humanity  the  conquered 
rebels  were  at  the  mercy  of  the  conquerors.     That  a  government 


RADICALISM   THE  NATION'S   HOPE.  339 

thus  outraged  had  a  most  perfect  right  to  exact  indemnity  for  the 
injuries  done  and  security  against  the  recurrence  of  such  outrages 
in  the  future  would  seem  too  clear  for  dispute.  What  the  nature 
of  that  security  should  be  ;  what  proof  should  be  required  of  a 
return  to  allegiance  ;  what  time  should  elapse  before  a  people  thus 
demoralized  should  be  restored  in  full  to  the  enjoyment  of  polit- 
ical rights  and  privileges,  are  questions  for  the  lawmaking  power 
to  decide,  and  that  decision  must  depend  on  grave  considerations 
of  public  safety  and  the  general  welfare."  This  language  covers 
the  whole  ground  contended  for.  The  power  exists,  and  Congress 
alone  must  determine  what  is  demanded  by  "  considerations  of 
the  public  safety  and  the  general  welfare."  The  question  before 
us  to-day  is  one  of  necessity  and  expediency,  and  not  of  power  ; 
a  question  of  fact,  rather  than  a  question  of  law. 

On  this  question,  Mr.  Speaker,  I  think  there  is  very  little  ground 
for  disagreement  among  loyal  men.  If  the  colored  millions  of  the 
South  need  any  earthly  good  supremely,  and  need  it  soon,  it  is  a 
share  in  the  governing  power.  Let  us  not  mock  them  by  the  hope 
of  it  at  some  time  in  the  distant  future,  conditioned  upon  alterna- 
tives which  we  tender  to  their  enemies,  but  grant  it  now,  as  their 
imperative  and  instant  necessity.  They  are  at  this  moment  pros- 
trate and  helpless  under  the  heel  of  their  old  tyrants.  But  for 
the  partial  succor  afforded  by  the  Freedmen's  Bureau  their  con- 
dition would  be  far  more  deplorable  than  that  of  slavery  itself. 
Although  the  Civil  Rights  Bill  is  now  the  law,  none  of  the  insurgent 
States  allow  colored  men  to  testify  when  white  men  are  parties. 
The  bill,  as  I  learn  from  General  Howard,  is  pronounced  void  by 
the  jurists  and  courts  of  the  South.  Florida  makes  it  a  misde- 
meanor for  colored  men  to  carry  weapons  without  a  license  to  do  so 
from  a  probate  judge,  and  the  punishment  of  the  offense  is  whip- 
ping and  the  pillory.  South  Carolina  has  the  same  enactments  ; 
and  a  black  man  convicted  of  an  offense  who  fails  immediately  to 
pay  his  fine  is  whipped.  A  magistrate  may  take  colored  children 
and  apprentice  them  for  alleged  misbehavior  without  consulting 
their  parents.  Mississippi  allows  no  negro  living  in  any  corporate 
town  to  lease  or  rent  lands.  Cunning  legislative  devices  are  being 
invented  in  most  of  the  States  to  restore  slavery  in  fact.  Without 
the  bollot  in  the  hands  of  the  freedmen,  local  law,  reenforced  by 
a  public  opinion  more  rampant  against  them  than  ever  before, 
will  render  the  Civil  Rights  Bill  a  dead  letter,  and  in  the  future,  as 
it  has  been  in  the  past,  the  national  authority  will  be  set  at  defi- 
ance.    Even  should  the  Civil  Rights  Bill  be  enforced,  it  would  be 


340  RADICALISM   THE   NATION'S   HOPE. 

a  palliative  and  not  a  cure,  since  the  right  to  sue,  to  testify,  to 
make  contracts,  and  to  own  property,  may  be  lawfully  enjoyed 
without  commanding  a  tithe  of  the  respect  with  which  the  ballot 
arms  every  man  who  wields  it.  This  is  the  sure  refuge  and  help 
of  the  freedmen,  and  Congress  has  the  same  power  to  secure  it 
that  it  has  to  withhold  it  from  the  rebels;  the  same  power  to  make 
suffrage  impartial  that  it  has  to  prescribe  any  other  condition 
whatever  in  the  reconstruction  of  these  States. 

If,  as  is  alleged,  no  such  power  exists  over  the  loyal  States,  that 
certainly  is  no  reason  why  we  should  not  exercise  it  where  we 
have  the  power.  With  the  authority  unquestionably  in  our  hands 
to  disfranchise  all  the  rebels,  the  plan  reported  by  the  joint  com- 
mittee leaves  the  ballot  in  their  hands.  With  strange  and  lavish 
liberality  even  the  leaders  of  the  rebellion  are  to  be  clothed  with 
this  sovereign  attribute.  They  may  not  hold  office,  but  they  may 
confer  it.  The  pirate  Semmes  shall  not  be  probate  judge,  but  his 
ballot  shall  be  counted  in  determinino;  who  shall  fill  the  office,  and 
so  shall  the  ballots  of  the  traitors  who  recently  tried  to  make  piracy 
honorable  in  Alabama.  General  Lee  cannot  be  President  of  the 
United  States,  nor  Governor  of  Virginia,  but  he  can  march  to  the 
polls  with  his  unhung  confederates  as  the  equal  before  the  law,  and 
under  the  old  flag,  of  the  loyalists  whose  valor  saved  the  Republic. 
The  legions  of  armed  traitors  who  fought  against  the  nation  four 
years,  and  deluged  it  in  sorrow  and  blood,  are  all  to  be  crowned 
with  the  honor  and  dignity  of  the  ballot ;  and,  as  if  to  make  trea- 
son respectable  and  loyalty  odious,  the  colored  people  of  the  conn- 
try  whose  enslavement  caused  the  war,  and  who  furnished  two 
hundred  thousand  soldiers  in  crushing  the  rebellion,  are  to  be 
handed  over  to  the  unbridled  hate  and  fury  of  their  old  masters. 

One  would  naturally  have  supposed  that  vanquished  rebels  would 
be  glad  enough  to  escape  with  their  lives,  and  that  Congress,  in 
conferring  upon  them  the  franchise,  would  at  least  atone  for  this 
unlooked-for  and  undeserved  liberality  by  a  policy  of  justice,  if  not 
of  gratitude,  toward  the  negroes,  whose  loyalty  was  never  ques- 
tioned, and  whose  strong  arms  helped  strike  clown  the  enemies  of 
the  nation.  One  would  have  supposed  that  if  any  party  must  be 
disfranchised  it  would  be  the  rebels,  and  that  loyal  men  would  gov- 
ern the  country  they  had  saved  by  their  valor.  I  am  quite  sure 
that  neither  the  Copperheads  nor  the  rebels  themselves,  till  they 
were  caressed  by  the  Executive,  ever  dreamed  of  this  congres- 
sional discrimination  in  favor  of  treason.  Sir,  it  will  gladden  the 
heart  of  every  traitor  in  the  Union.     No  loyal  man  can  defend  it 


RADICALISM   THE   NATION'S   HOPE.  341 

with  a  good  conscience.  Its  recreancy  is  aggravated  by  every  fact 
which  comes  to  us  respecting  the  situation  in  the  South.  The  gen- 
eral feeling  there  against  the  freedmen  is  that  of  intense  hostility 
and  envenomed  hate.  The  institution  of  slavery,  through  the  in- 
stinct of  a  common  interest,  accorded  to  the  negi*o  some  privil^o-es  ; 
but  now  he  has  literally' "  no  rights  which  white  men  are  bound  to 
respect."  Sharing  no  longer  the  measure  of  consideration  which 
pertained  to  his  condition  as  a  slave,  he  is  regarded  as  a  despised 
outcast  and  treated  like  a  dog.  A  feeling  scarcely  less  intolerant 
is  evinced  toward  the  few  loyal  white  men  in  these  States,  who  in 
many  localities  are  living  in  constant  dread  of  violence  and  mur- 
der, and  are  frequently  waylaid  and  shot.  Quite  recently  I  have 
received  a  letter  from  a  gentleman  of  intelligence  and  worth  in  one 
of  the  Southern  States,  in  which  he  says  that  he  and  his  friends 
and  neighbors  who  have  been  hunted  in  the  mountains  like  deer 
all  through  the  war  because  they  refused  to  take  up  arms  against 
their  country,  having  had  their  houses  plundered  or  burned,  their 
property  destroyed,  and  themselves  reduced  to  beggary,  are  still 
living  in  constant  dread  of  assassination  ;  and  he  begs  me,  if  pos- 
sible, to  procure  for  them  from  the  Secretary  of  War  transportation 
to  the  North.  This  is  a  single  instance  among  many  of  the  actual 
condition  and  treatment  of  the  loyalists  of  the  South,  under  the 
fiendish  domination  of  the  men  who  have  been  ironically  styled 
conquered.  Sir,  in  heart  and  purpose  they  are  less  conquered  than 
before  the  war.  If  possible  they  hate  the  Yankees,  with  their  free 
schools  and  free  institutions,  more  than  ever.  I  believe  their  wrath 
is  more  and  more  a  consuming  fire.  Down  in  the  very  depths  of 
their  souls  they  despise  the  Union,  its  generals,  its  soldiers,  its 
statesmen,  its  prosperity,  its  peace.  Upon  the  Freedmen's  Bureau 
and  the  Civil  Rights  Bill  they  pour  out  the  sincerest  and  most  heart- 
felt curses.  Not  a  man  has  been  found  among  them  who  does  not 
defend  the  right  of  secession  and  vindicate  the  rebel  cause.  They 
choose  as  their  senators  and  representatives  in  Congress  and  for 
the  highest  offices  in  the  States  the  most  conspicuous  and  guilt}'  of 
their  unrepentant  traitor  chiefs.  They  insult  the  old  flag  and  scoff 
at  our  national  songs.  They  commemorate  the  deeds  and  honor 
the  tombs  of  their  grandest  villains,  and  refuse  to  the  loyal  colored 
people  of  the  South  the  coveted  privilege  of  strewing  flowers  over 
the  graves  of  our  heroes  who  died  that  the  Republic  might  live. 
They  crown  treason  as  the  highest  virtue,  and  elevate  murder  to 
the  rank  of  a  fine  art.  Their  newspapers  are  reeking  with  the  foul- 
est and  most  atrocious  sentiments,  and  their  manifest  purpose  is  to 


342  RADICALISM   THE  NATION'S   HOPE. 

scatter  the  baleful  fires  of  discord  and  hate  throughout  the  South. 
Under  this  new  "  reign  of  terror,"  emigration  to  the  South,  which 
we  hoped  would  regenerate  it,  is  interdicted,  while  the  loyal  men 
already  there  are  looking  about  them  for  the  means  of  speedy  es- 
cape. Such  is  the  Eden  of  blessedness  and  beauty  which  has  been 
chiefly  evoked  by  "  my  policy  "  and  such  are  the  people  in  whose 
hands  Congress  proposes  to  leave  the  powers  of  government,  while 
it  withholds  the  ballot  from  the  only  people  whose  redeeming  agency 
and  cooperating  grace  can  restore  order,  liberty,  and  peace. 

And  these  people,  Mr.  Speaker,  who  have  "  refined  upon  vil- 
lainy till  it  wants  a  name,"  whose  hearts  are  thus  impregnated 
with  the  most  rancorous  hate  toward  the  freedmen,  and  whose  as- 
cendancy over  the  South  is  hourly  extending  in  all  directions,  are 
expected  to  give  the  ballot  to  the  negro,  if  only  we  provide  that 
otherwise  he  shall  not  be  counted  in  the  basis  of  represen- 
tation. Sir,  they  will  do  no  such  thing.  They  would  see  the 
negro  in  Paradise,  sooner  than  see  him  with  the  ballot  in  his 
hands.  The  madness  which  rushed  into  the  rebellion  in  the  in- 
terest of  negro  slavery,  and  which  to-day,  instead  of  being  tamed 
by  suffering  and  trial  is  fiercer  than  ever,  will  never  extend  jus- 
tice to  these  people.  The  much-talked-of  "  war  of  races,"  ending 
in  negro  extermination,  would  be  far  more  probable.  I  am  cer- 
tainly ready  to  vote,  as  I  have  done,  for  reducing  representation 
in  the  revolted  States  to  the  basis  of  actual  voters.  No  man  could 
defend  his  refusal  to  do  so  ;  but  I  believe  the  rebels,  with  the 
President  at  their  back,  will  never  agree  to  any  such  amendment 
of  the  Constitution,  and  that  with  their  allies  in  the  North  they 
will  be  able  to  defeat  it.  Neither  with  nor  without  such  an 
amendment,  therefore,  in  my  judgment,  is  there  any  well-grounded 
hope  for  justice  from  the  rebel  class.  The  decision  of  the  case 
would  require  years  of  time,  since  it  would  involve  the  question 
whether  nineteen  or  twenty-seven  States  are  required  to  amend 
the  Constitution  ;  and  the  Supreme  Court  could  not  pass  upon  the 
point  till  nineteen  States  had  ratified  the  amendment.  During  all 
this  time  the  freedmen  would  be  committed  to  the  tender  mercies 
of  their  enemies,  instead  of  sharing  with  them  at  once  the  powers 
of  government. 

Sir,  why  should  we  decline  a  present  duty  which  is  as  clear  and 
as  palpable  as  the  sunlight?  Why  impiously  propose  to  red-handed 
traitors  and  assassins  that  they  may  trample  down  the  precious 
rights  of  four  million  helpless  but  loyal  people,  if  only  it  shall  be 
agreed  that  these  downtrodden  millions  shall  not  be  represented  in 


RADICALISM   THE  NATION'S   HOPE.  343 

Congress  ?  Why  offer  them  a  proposition  which,  if  accepted, 
would  be  as  fatal  to  the  interests  of  the  colored  race  as  would  have 
been  the  acceptance  of  the  offer  of  President  Lincoln  to  leave  that 
race  in  bondage  if  the  rebels  would  lay  down  their  arms  within  a 
stipulated  time  ?  As  I  have  already  shown,  the  power  to  do  what 
we  wish  is  in  our  hands.  Congress  can  enact  a  statute  securing 
impartial  suffrage  in  all  the  insurgent  States,  in  which  civil  govern- 
ment is  totally  overthrown,  and  over  which  our  power  is  supreme. 
Congress  can  pass  enabling  acts,  as  opportunely  proposed  by  my 
distinguished  friend  from  Pennsylvania  [Mr.  Stevens],  providing 
for  the  calling  of  State  conventions  in  those  States  to  form  consti- 
tutions, and  fixing  the  qualifications  of  voters.  Congress,  if  it 
deems  it  expedient,  can  disfranchise  the  rebels,  or  any  portion  of 
them,  and  refuse  admission  to  the  rebellious  States  till  they  have 
secured  impartial  suffrage  to  their  people.  And  finally,  Congress, 
if  constitutional  amendments  are  necessary,  can  propose  such  as 
will  accord  with  justice  and  the  rights  of  man,  and  will  therefore 
have  the  strongest  pledge  of  their  ultimate  success  ;  while,  in  the 
mean  time,  whatever  obstacles  may  be  thrown  in  our  way  by  the 
accidental  occupant  of  the  White  House,  the  great  cause  of  loyalty 
and  freedom  will  be  strengthened  and  fortified  by  every  honest 
and  manly  endeavor  to  serve  it. 

But  it  is  said,  Mr.  Speaker,  that  the  people  are  not  ready  for  so 
radical  a  policy,  and  that  while  the  reconstruction  of  the  rebel 
States  on  a  solid  and  enduring  basis  is  very  desirable,  we  must 
accept  the  necessity  which  compels  us  to  regard  the  temper  of 
the  public  feeling  and  the  practical  effects  upon  the  harmony  of 
the  Union  party  which  advance  measures  would  be  likely  to  pro- 
duce. 

Sir,  I  defend  the  people  against  this  accusation  against  their  in- 
telligence and  loyalty.  My  own  experience  is  that  politicians  are 
generally,  if  not  invariably,  behind  the  people,  and  rather  inclined 
to  block  up  the  path  of  popular  progress  than  to  clear  the  way. 
This  was  undoubtedly  true  during  the  war,  and  every  intelligent 
man  can  recall  proofs  of  it  in  abundance.  The  people  were  ready 
for  a  radical  policy  in  the  first  year  of  the  conflict,  as  was  shown 
by  the  proclamation  of  General  Fremont  of  September  2,  1861. 
It  was  hailed  with  nearly  universal  joy  by  the  Republican  masses, 
while  every  leading  Democratic  paper  in  the  country  warmly  ap- 
proved it.  So  intense  and  wide-spread  was  the  feeling  of  enthusi- 
astic loyalty  among  the  people  from  the  firing  upon  Fort  Sumter 
down  to  the  revocation  of  this  anti-slavery  order,  that  party  lines 


344  RADICALISM   THE   NATION'S  HOPE. 

seemed  utterly  forgotten,  and  the  Democratic  organization  in  fact 
ceased  to  exist.  Copperhead  Democracy  was  a  sprout  from  the 
Executive  edict  which  Kentucky  procured  in  the  interest  of  slav- 
ery ;  but  the  people,  at  every  stage  of  the  conflict,  received  with 
open  arms  and  grateful  hearts  every  earnest  man  who  came  for- 
ward, and  every  vigorous  war  measure  which  was  proposed. 

Sir,  why  were  the  Union  men  defeated  in  the  fall  of  1862  ?  It 
was  because  the  people  feared  that  General  McClellan  carried  the 
government  in  his  pocket,  and  had  no  faith  in  his  conservative 
policy  which  bore  no  good  fruits.  The  men  who  failed  to  get  back 
to  the  succeeding  Congress  were  generally  the  timid  men  who 
counseled  policy  ;  while  the  Radicals  who  denounced  McClellan 
and  preached  the  anti-slavery  gospel  boldly  were  successful.  Why 
did  the  Unionists  sweep  the  country  in  the  next  congressional 
elections  ?  It  was  because  of  their  bolder  and  more  pronounced 
Radicalism.  Why  have  our  public  men  failed  before  the  people 
in  the  political  conflicts  of  the  past  twenty  years  ?  Not,  certainly, 
because  they  outran  the  people  in  radical  progress,  but  because  the 
people  loved  courage,  and  felt  that  bolder  leadership  was  de- 
manded. For  the  truth  of  this  I  appeal  to  gentlemen  on  this 
floor  who  have  made  political  life  a  profession,  and  who  are  most 
familiar  with  the  history  of  American  politics. 

A  servant  of  the  people  needs  to  have  faith  in  the  people.  In 
dealing  with  a  great  question  involving  the  reconstruction  of  gov- 
ernment and  regeneration  of  society  in  nearly  half  the  territory  of 
the  Republic  he  has  no  right  to  be  "  a  negative  expression,  or  an 
unknown  quantity,  in  the  algebra  which  is  to  work  out  the  prob- 
lem." He  has  no  right  to  say  that  the  people  are  not  ready  for  a 
given  policy,  if  he  himself  understands  it,  and  is  convinced  that  it 
is  just  and  necessary.  On  the  contrary,  he  will  find  it  most  safe  to 
accept  our  democratic  theory  that  the  people  are  capable  of  under- 
standino-  their  affairs,  and  of  managing  them  through  honest  and 
fearless  representatives.  What  our  politicians  most  need  to-day  is 
faith,  faith  in  the  people,  faith  in  justice,  and  then  to  add  to  their 
faith  courage.  If  the  policy  you  propose  is  right,  nothing  is  so  safe 
as  to  trust  the  people  ;  if  it  is  crooked,  a  weak  and  shallow  expe- 
dient, a  truce  with  justice  and  not  a  real  peace,  then  nothing 
could  be  more  unsafe  than  an  appeal  to  the  voice  of  the  people, 
which  finally  will  be  the  voice  of  truth. 

The  people,  you  say,  are  not  ready  for  negro  ballots  in  the  in- 
surgent States.  Sir,  I  would  be  glad  to  have  the  proof  of  that. 
Since   the   outbreak   in   1861    they  seem  to  have  been  ready  for 


RADICALISM   THE   NATION'S   HOPE.  345 

whatever  has  come  in  the  rapid  and  stirring  march  of  events.  They 
were  ready  for  the  war,  appalling  as  it  was,  and  utterly  foreign  to 
their  habits  and  tastes.  When  it  came,  as  I  have  shown,  they 
were  ready  for  radical  measures  in  its  prosecution.  They  were 
ready,  or  soon  became  ready,  to  arm  the  negroes  against  their  mas- 
ters, and  to  demand  the  complete  emancipation  of  the  millions  in 
chains.  They  were  ready  to  sacrifice  the  lives  of  more  than  three 
hundred  thousand  brave  men  to  save  the  Republic  from  dismem- 
berment and  ruin.  They  were  ready  to  send  sorrow  into  millions 
of  households,  and  to  entail  upon  their  children  a  weary  burden 
of  debt  in  order  that  freedom  should  bear  rule  m  these  States. 
They  were  ready,  when  the  war  was  ended,  to  demand  the  just 
chastisement  of  the  great  national  criminals  who  were  the  instiga- 
tors of  the  desolating  conflict.  They  were  ready  to  sanction  the 
policy  of  a  Freedmen's  Bureau  to  guard  and  care  for  the  men  and 
women  made  nominally  free  by  the  power  of  war.  They  were 
ready  to  pass  a  constitutional  amendment  abolishing  slavery  for- 
ever, and  arming  Congress  with  the  power,  by  appropriate  legisla- 
tion, to  make  such  abolition  effective.  They  were  ready  to  crown 
the  negro  with  the  honors  of  a  soldier  of  the  Republic,  and  ask 
him  to  help  defend  it  against  its  assassins,  and  thereby  to  pledge 
themselves  before  God  and  man  that  he  should  thenceforward  share 
all  the  rights  enjoyed  by  white  citizens.  They  were  ready  to  say, 
in  January  last,  through  their  repsesentatives  in  this  Hall,  by  a 
vote  of  116  to  54,  that  no  man  under  the  exclusive  jurisdiction  of 
the  National  Government  should  be  deprived  of  the  ballot  on  ac- 
count of  race  or  color ;  and  they  have  been  disappointed,  I  am 
very  sure,  in  the  long  delay  of  like  action  in  the  Senate.  And 
they  were  ready,  speaking  through  overwhelming  majorities  in  both 
Houses  of  Congress,  and  in  defiance  of  the  Executive,  to  indorse 
the  Civil  Rights  Bill,  which  lacks  only  one  short  step  of  reaching 
the  ballot,  and  the  principles  of  which  can  only  be  defended  by  a 
logic  which  necessitates  the  grant  of  it  as  the  grandest  of  all  civil 
rights,  and  the  pledge  and  shield  of  them  all. 

Mr.  Speaker,  a  people  who  have  proved  themselves  ready  for 
all  this  will  be  found  ready  to  move  steadily  forward  toward 
the  complete  accomplishment  of  their  grand  purpose.  Most  as- 
suredly they  will  not  turn  back,  nor  pause  in  their  course.  Their 
schooling  during  the  past  five  years  has  armed  them  against  fear, 
and  the  man  who  says  they  are  not  ready  for  all  measures  required 
to  make  good  to  the  nation  the  righteous  ends  of  the  war  impeaches 
both  their  intelligence  and  their  patriotism.     The  people  are  not 


346  RADICALISM   THE   NATION'S   HOPE. 

ready  !  This  is  the  cry  which  is  daily  rung  out  here  from  a  chorus 
of  voices.  We  ourselves  are  all  ready,  individually,  for  the  most 
radical  policy,  if  the  country  would  sustain  us.  Impartial  suffrage 
is  openly  indorsed  as  the  true  doctrine,  which,  in  due  season,  the 
people  will  be  prepared  to  accept.  They  may  be  ready,  we  are 
told,  after  the  fall  elections,  and  the  hope  is  frequently  expressed 
that  then  we  shall  meet  the  issue  squarely.  Almost  everybody, 
save  the  most  unblushing  Copperheads,  says  that  negro  voting  in 
the  South  is  the  true  reconstruction,  and  is  absolutely  necessary  if 
the  rebels  are  to  vote  ;  but  the  country  is  not  ripe  for  it.  "  Per- 
sonally," as  Henry  Clay  said  of  the  annexation  of  Texas,  all  of  us 
"  would  be  glad  to  see  it,"  but  the  issue  is  premature. 

Sir,  gentlemen  are  themselves  premature,  in  all  such  statements. 
The  people  are  ready,  in  this  battle  of  politics,  and  would  gladly 
go  to  the  front  if  they  could,  Reaving  the  politicians  to  straggle  in 
the  rear.  And  if  the  voice  of  the  loyal  millions  could  be  faith- 
fully executed  to-day,  treason  would  be  made  infamous,  traitors 
would  be  disfranchised,  and  the  loyal  men  of  the  South,  irrespec- 
tive of  color,  would  take  the  front  seats  in  the  work  of  reconstruc- 
tion and  government.  Do  you  doubt  this?  If  there  is  real  union 
among  Union  men  everywhere,  upon  any  single  point,  it  is  in  their 
absolute  determination  to  make  sure  the  fruits  of  their  victory, 
through  whatever  measures  may  be  found  needful.  Sir,  remem- 
bering the  past,  can  any  man  really  believe  the  loyal  masses  will 
take  fright  at  the  spectacle  of  negro  ballots  in  the  regions  blasted 
by  treason  ?  All  civil  government  there  is  overthrown.  The 
President  himself  has  so  officially  declared.  The  governments 
extemporized  there  by  himself  are  purely  military,  and  so  far  as 
they  have  assumed  to  be  more  than  that  they  are  simply  usurpa- 
tions. This  is  also  perfectly  understood  by  the  country.  The 
work  of  organizing  civil  governments  in  these  regions  belongs  to 
their  people,  subject  entirely  to  the  control  and  direction  of  Con- 
gress. This,  too,  has  been  officially  admitted  by  the  President. 
And  now,  if  Congress,  at  this  session,  should  pass  the  enabling  act 
referred  to,  reported  by  the  venerable  gentleman  from  Pennsylva- 
nia, authorizing  the  holding  of  conventions  to  form  new  State  gov- 
ernments, and  prescribing  the  same  rule  of  impartial  suffrage  as 
was  done  by  this  House  for  the  District  of  Columbia,  would  the 
people  I'evolt  against  it  ?  Would  they  even  be  offended  ?  Does 
any  intelligent,  fair-minded  man  really  believe  it?  The  restora- 
tion of  civil  government  in  the  South  is  undeniably  necessary. 
That  Congress  alone,  in  cooperation  with  the  people,  can  do  this, 


RADICALISM   THE  NATION'S   HOPE.  347 

is  equally  certain.  The  mode  of  organizing  civil  government  in 
regions  under  the  national  jurisdiction  is  perfectly  familiar  to  the 
people,  and  well  settled  by  long  and  uniform  practice.  Who,  then, 
shall  be  alarmed,  if  Congress,  in  rightfully  initiating  new  govern- 
ments, shall  secure  a  voice  to  the  colored  millions  who  constitute 
more  than  two  fifths  of  the  people  and  an  overwhelming  majority 
of  those  who  are  loyal  ?  What  Union  man  will  recoil  from  a  pol- 
icy of  impartial  justice  ?  Do  we  still  so  love  our  "  Southern  breth- 
ren "  that  we  must  necessarily  give  them  the  ballot,  and  so  sympa- 
thize with  their  tastes  and  dread  their  ill-will  that  we  must  deny  it 
to  the  freedmen  ?  Are  the  people  to  be  dealt  with  as  idiots  or 
madmen  on  this  subject,  and  counted  rational  on  every  other  ?  Sir, 
let  us  put  away  timid  counsels,  and  face  the  truth  like  men.  Let 
us  be  wise  to-day.  Let  us  have  faith  in  the  sturdy  common  sense 
and  unquenchable  loyalty  and  patriotism  of  the  people,  as  becomes 
those  who  have  seen  them  confront  the  greatest  of  trials,  and 
never  yet  found  them  wanting.  Let  us  not  doubt,  for  a  moment, 
that  they  will  sustain  us,  if  we  ourselves  have  the  courage  which 
"  mounteth  with  occasion,"  and  will  only  "  dare  do  all  that  may 
become  a  man."  Above  all,  let  us  remember  that  Providential 
guidance  which  in  our  trials  hitherto  has  favored  us  exactly  in  the 
degree  we  have  allied  our  cause  to  justice,  and  withheld  from  us  the 
coveted  prize  of  success  as  often  as  we  have  sought  it  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  rights  of  man.  That  same  Providential  discipline 
will  most  assuredly  go  with  us  to  the  end,  whether  we  bravely 
meet  the  great  duties  of  the  crisis  or  prove  ourselves  unequal  to 
our  day  and  our  work.  Nothing,  therefore,  is  so  safe,  and  so  sure 
to  win,  as  the  policy  which  shall  make  this  truth  our  guide.  God 
give  us  faith  in  his  counsels,  and  courage  to  follow  them  !  And 
let  us  not  forget  that  — 

"  The  wise  and  active  conquer  difficulties, 
By  daring  to  attempt  them ;  sloth  and  folly 
Shiver  and  shrink  at  sight  of  trial  and  hazard, 
And  make  the  impossibility  they  fear." 


REGENERATION  BEFORE  RECONSTRUCTION. 

HOUSE   OF  REPRESENTATIVES,  JANUARY   28,  1867.1 

[The  principles  embodied  in  this  strong  protest  against  hasty  and  ill-judged  Re- 
construction find  their  best  vindication  in  the  scenes  of  rapine  and  misrule  which 
have  since  afflicted  the  States  of  the  South,  and  which  it  is  confidently  believed 
might  have  been  averted  by  the  methods  here  so  urgently  commended.] 

Mr.  Speaker,  —  In  view  of  the  time  already  consumed  in  the 
discussion  of  the  measure  now  before  us,  and  the  general  desire  of 
members  to  reach  an  early  vote  on  the  pending  motion  to  commit, 
I  shall  endeavor  to  address  the  House  as  briefly  as  possible  ;  and 
I  therefore  prefer,  on  this  occasion,  to  submit  my  views  without  in- 
terruption. I  cannot  support  the  amendment  proposed  by  the  gen- 
tleman from  Pennsylvania  [Mr.  Stevens]  in  its  present  form  ;  but 
I  shall  not  vote  to  send  it  to  the  Committee  on  Reconstruction  at 
this  late  hour  in  the  session.  I  believe  the  time  has  come  for 
action,  and  that  having  this  great  subject  now  before  us  we  should 
proceed  earnestly,  and  with  as  little  delay  as  may  be,  to  mature 
some  measure  which  may  meet  the  demand  of  the  people.  Nearly 
two  years  have  elapsed  since  the  close  of  the  war,  during  the  whole 
of  which  time  the  regions  blasted  by  treason  have  been  subject  to  the 
authority  of  Congress  ;  and  yet  these  regions  are  still  unprovided 
with  any  valid  civil  governments,  and  no  loyal  man  within  their 
limits,  black  or  white,  is  safe  in  his  person  or  estate.  The  Civil 
Rights  Act  and  the  Freedmen's  Bureau  Bill  are  set  at  open  defiance, 
while  freedom  of  speech  and  of  the  press  are  unknown.  The  loyal 
people  of  these  districts,  with  sorely-tried  patience  and  hopes  long 
deferred,  plead  with  us  for  our  speedy  interposition  in  their  behalf; 
and  even  the  conquered  rebels  themselves,  who  are  supreme  in 
this  general  reign  of  terror,  seem  to  be  growing  weary  of  their 
term  of  lawlessness  and  misrule.  Sir,  let  us  tolerate  no  further 
procrastination  ;  and  while  we  justly  hold  the  President  responsible 
for  the  trouble  and  maladministration  which  now  curse  the  South 
and  disturb  the  peace  of  the  country,  let  us  remember  that  the 
national  odium  already  perpetually  linked  with  the  name  of  An- 

1  On  House  Bill  543  to  restore  the  States  lately  in  rebellion  to  their  political  rights. 


REGENERATION  BEFORE  RECONSTRUCTION.    349 

drew  Johnson  will  be  shared  by  us,  if  we  fail  in   the  great  duty 
which  is  now  brought  to  our  doors. 

Mr.  Speaker,  my  first  objection  to  the  amendment  proposed  is 
that  it  practically  confounds  the  distinction  between  treason  and 
loyalty  by  allowing  the  elective  franchise  to  the  great  body  of  the 
criminals  who  strove,  through  four  bloody  years,  to  destroy  the 
nation's  life.  No  such  policy  can  have  my  sanction.  The  sixth 
section  of  the  amendment,  which  seeks  to  guard  against  this  by  the 
affidavit  which  it  requires,  would  prove  a  delusion  and  a  snare. 
I  will  read  the  form  of  the  oath  which  it  prescribes:  — 

"  I,  A  B,  do  solemnly  swear,  on  the  Holy  Evangelists  of  Almighty 
God,  that  on  the  4th  day  of  March,  1864,  and  at  all  times  there- 
after, I  would  willingly  have  complied  with  the  requirements  of 
the  proclamation  of  the  President  of  the  United  States,  issued  on 
the  8th  day  of  December,  1863,  had  a  safe  opportunity  of  so 
doing  been  allowed  me;  that  on  the  said  4th  of  March,  1864,  and 
at  all  times  thereafter,  I  was  opposed  to  the  continuance  of  the  re- 
bellion and  to  the  establishment  of  the  so-called  Confederate  Gov- 
ernment, and  voluntarily  gave  no  aid  or  encouragement  thereto, 
but  earnestly  desired  the  success  of  the  Union,  and  the  suppres- 
sion of  all  armed  resistance  to  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  ;  and  that  I  will  henceforth  faithfully  support  the  Constitu- 
tion of  the  United  States  and  the  Union  of  the  States  thereunder." 

Sir,  of  what  value  would  be  such  an  oath  ?  In  exacting  it,  in- 
stead of  protecting  the  rights  of  loyal  men  we  should  build  a  safe 
bridge  over  which  every  rebel  in  the  South  could  pass  back  into 
power.  How  could  perjury  be  assigned  upon  such  an  affidavit? 
By  what  process  could  the  prosecutor  prove,  on  the  trial,  the 
hidden  purpose  or  the  secret  intention  of  the  party  ?  I  have  little 
faith  in  the  oaths  of  rebels  under  any  circumstances.  If  our  ex- 
perience in  the  late  war  establishes  any  general  rule  in  such  cases, 
it  is  that  the  oath  of  a  traitor  proves  nothing  but  the  perjury  of 
the  villain  who  takes  it.  Most  assuredly  we  could  not  rely  upon 
it  where  the  man  who  swears  runs  no  risk  of  being  brought  to 
account ;  and  the  exaction  of  such  an  oath  of  men  who  have 
ruthlessly  lifted  their  hands  against  their  country  is  scarcely  less 
than  a  mockery. 

But  if  it  be  granted  that  this  oath  would  be  honestly  taken,  it 
does  not  follow  that  we  should  now  restore  the  franchise  on  any 
such  cheap  and  easy  conditions.  Are  we  willing  thus  to  degrade 
and  belittle  this  great  right,  the  highest  expression  of  citizenship, 
and  its  truest  safeguard  ?     Must  we  make  haste  to  share  the  gov- 


350  REGENERATION   BEFORE   RECONSTRUCTION. 

erning  power  of  the  country  with  the  rebel  hordes  who  fought  us 
nearly  three  years,  because  they  grew  weary  of  their  enterprise  on 
the  4th  day  of  March,  1864,  and  desired  then  to  give  it  up  ?  Is 
treason  against  the  nation  an  offense  so  slight,  an  affair  so  trifling, 
that  no  real  atonement  for  it  shall  be  demanded  ?  Sir,  these  are 
grave  questions,  and  the  state  of  our  country  to-day  demands  that 
Congress  shall  ponder  them.  The  citizen's  duty  of  allegiance  and 
the  nation's  obligation  of  protection  are  reciprocal.  The  one  is  the 
price  of  the  other,  and  the  compact  is  alike  binding  upon  both  par- 
ties. When  the  rebels  broke  this  compact  by  attempting  the  crime 
of  national  murder,  their  right  of  citizenship  was  forfeited,  and  the 
nation  has  the  undoubted  right  to  declare  the  consequences  of  that 
forfeiture  by  law.  It  not  only  has  the  right,  but  in  my  judgment  is 
sacredly  bound  to  exercise  it.  And  why  ?  Because,  in  the  language 
of  Vattel,  "  Every  nation  is  obliged  to  perform  the  duty  of  self- 
preservation."  The  only  solid  foundation  of  national  security  is  the 
allegiance  of  the  citizen  ;  and  the  most  solemn  duty  which  is  at 
this  moment  devolved  upon  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  is 
the  duty  of  keeping  the  government  of  the  country  in  the  hands 
of  lo}Tal  men.  No  government  can  be  secure,  and  no  govern- 
ment deserves  to  live,  which  allows  its  enemies  a  common  and 
equal  voice  with  its  friends  in  the  exercise  of  its  powers.  This 
nation  has  hitherto  recognized  this  principle.  In  the  very  first 
years  of  the  Republic  Congress  sanctioned  the  perpetual  disfran- 
chisement of  the  leader  and  principal  officers  of  Shay's  rebellion  ; 
and  the  acts  of  Congress  which  warrant  the  exercise  of  this  power 
of  disfranchisement  stand  in  full  force  and  unchallenged  on  your 
statute-books.  Congress,  during  the  rebellion,  deprived  of  all 
rights  of  citizenship  those  who  deserted  from  the  military  or  naval 
service,  or  who,  after  being  'w  duly  enrolled,"  left  the  United  States 
or  their  military  districts  to  avoid  a  draft.  Certainly  these  offenses 
are  no  greater  than  the  crime  of  treason,  persisted  in  for  successive 
years.  The  authority  of  Congress  in  all  such  cases  rests  upon  the 
universal  law  of  nations.  It  grows  out  of  the  contract  of  allegi- 
ance and  the  duty  of  every  nation  to  preserve  its  own  life  ;  and 
therefore  no  trial  and  conviction  by  any  judicial  tribunal  are  neces- 
sary as  a  condition  of  the  declared  forfeiture.  The  forfeiture  is  not 
declared  as  a  punishment  for  the  violation  of  any  criminal  law,  but 
as  a  safeguard  against  national  danger.  It  is  an  expression  of  the 
same  policy  which  excludes  aliens  from  the  rights  of  citizens.  The 
power  is  not  unconstitutional,  for  our  fathers,  in  framing  the  Con- 
stitution, recognized  the  law  of  nations,  as  they   were  compelled 


REGENERATION  BEFORE  RECONSTRUCTION.    351 

to  do,  in  launching  the  Republic  among  the  independent  Powers 
of  the  world.  Nor  is  it  at  all  affected  by  the  question  whether  the 
districts  lately  in  revolt  are  States  in  the  Union  or  territorial  prov- 
inces. In  both  States  and  Territories  the  national  authority  must 
be  held  paramount  as  to  the  rights  of  citizenship,  which  has  uni- 
formly been  regarded  as  a  national  question.  If  the  second 
section  of  the  first  article  of  the  Constitution  gives  to  the  States 
the  power  to  say  who  shall  vote,  this  must  necessarily  be  under- 
stood to  apply  only  to  those  who  are  citizens  of  the  United  States, 
since  otherwise  the  national  authority  might  be  overthrown  by 
aliens  in  our  midst  in  combination  with  citizens.  The  late  war  for 
the  Union  has  been  carried  on  at  immense  cost  for  the  purpose  of 
demonstrating  to  all  the  world  that  we  are  a  nation;  and  every 
nation,  according  to  the  high  authority  already  quoted,  "  has  a 
right  to  every  thing  that  can  ward  off  imminent  danger,  and  keep 
at  a  distance  whatever  is  capable  of  causing  its  ruin  ;  and  from 
the  very  same  reason  that  establishes  its  right  it  has  also  the 
right  to  the  things  necessary  to  its  preservation." 

Mr.  Speaker,  with  what  face  can  we  denounce  the  President  for 
his  wholesale  pardons,  and  charge  him  with  making  treason  honor- 
able and  loyalty  odious,  if  we  ourselves  voluntarily  clothe  with 
the  honor  and  dignity  of  the  ballot  the  men  who  have  forfeited  all 
their  rights  by  their  crimes  against  their  country  ?  With  what  con- 
sistency can  we  a  declaim  against  the  monstrous  blood-guiltiness  of 
treason,  while  we  extend  to  the  traitor  the  right  hand  of  political 
fellowship?  Sir,  not  a  single  rebel  has  yet  expiated  his  crime  on 
the  gallows.  Not  one  has  even  been  tried.  Neither  confiscation 
nor  exile  has  been  the  portion  of  the  armed  assassins  and  outlaws 
who  summoned  to  their  untimely  graves  more  than  three  hundred 
thousand  heroes  of  the  Republic,  and  made  the  civilized  world 
stand  aghast  at  the  recital  of  their  crimes.  I  do  not  say  we  should 
disfranchise  the  rebels  because  the  President  has  allowed  them  to 
go  unpunished,  but  that  loyal  men  alone  can  be  trusted  to  govern 
the  country  they  have  saved,  and  that  the  false  clemency  of  the 
Executive  is  the  exact  reverse  of  a  good  reason  for  restoring  trai- 
tors to  power.  Nor  do  I  argue  that  perpetual  disfranchisement 
will  certainly  be  necessary,  but  that  the  nation,  for  its  own  safety, 
should  withhold  the  ballot  from  its  enemies  till  they  have  proved 
themselves  fit  to  cast  it.  No  such  proof  can  be  adduced.  On 
the  contrary,  the  spirit  of  treason  is  now  quite  as  reeking  and 
defiant  in  the  revolted  districts  as  at  any  time  during  the  war.  In 
the  sunshine  of  the  President  it  has  sprouted  up  into  new  and 


352    REGENERATION  BEFORE  RECONSTRUCTION. 

* 

more  vigorous  forms  of  life,  while  repentant  rebels  are  unknown* 
save  in  the  sense  of  regretting  the  failure  of  their  treason.  Sir,  I 
hope  the  Thirty-ninth  Congress  will  not  sully  its  good  name  by 
confounding  the  friends  of  the  country  with  its  enemies  in  the 
reconstruction  and  government  of  the  districts  blighted  by  treason, 
and  thus  trample  down  the  great  principle  that  allegiance  to  the 
nation  is  the  condition  of  citizenship  and  the  bulwark  of  our 
freedom.  To  do  this  would  be  to  surrender  our  strongest  weapons 
to  the  President  and  his  rebel  allies.  It  would  be  disloyalty  to 
the  great  cause  which  would  thus  again  be  imperiled,  and  bring 
dishonor  .upon  the  graves  of  our  martyred  legions  who  perished 
in  deadly  encounter  with  the  traitors  whom  we  now  propose  to 
restore  to  their  lost  rights. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  further  object  to  the.  measure  before  us  that  it  is 
a  mere  enabling  act,  looking  to  the  early  restoration  of  the  rebel- 
lious districts  to  their  former  places  in  the  Union,  instead  of  a 
well-considered  frame  of  government  contemplating  such  restora- 
tion at  some  indefinite  future  time,  and  designed  to  fit  them  to 
receive  it.  They  are  not  ready  for  reconstruction  as  independent 
States,  on  any  terms  or  conditions  which  Congress  might  impose ; 
and  I  believe  the  time  has  come  for  us  to  say  so.  We  owe  this 
much  to  their  misguided  people,  whose  false  and  feverish  hopes 
have  been  kept  alive  by  the  course  of  the  Executive  and  the  hesi- 
tating policy  of  Congress.  I  think  I  am  safe  in  saying  that  if 
these  districts  were  to-day  admitted  as  States,  with  the  precise 
political  and  social  elements  which  we  know  to  exist  in  them,  even 
with  their  rebel  population  disfranchised  and  the  ballot  placed  in 
the  hands  of  radical  Union  men  only,  irrespective  of  coloT,  the  ex- 
periment would  be  ruinous  to  the  best  interests  of  their-  loyal 
people  and  calamitous  to  the  nation.  The  withdrawal  of  federal 
intervention  and  the  unchecked  operation  of  local  supremacy 
would  as  fatally  hedge  up  the  way  of  justice  and  equality  as  the 
rebel  ascendency  which  now  prevails.  Why  ?  Simply  because  no 
theory  of  government,  no  forms  of  administration,  can  be  trusted, 
unless  adequately  supported  by  public  opinion.  The  power  of  the 
great  landed  aristocracy  in  these  regions,  if  unrestrained  by  power 
from  without,  would  inevitably  assert  itself.  Its  political  chemistry, 
obeying  its  own  laws,  would  very  soon  crystallize  itself  into  the 
same  forms  of  treason  and  lawlessness  which  to-day  hold  their 
undisturbed  empire  over  the  existing  loyal  element.  What  these 
regions  need,  above  all  things,  is  not  an  easy  and  quick  return  to 
their  forfeited  rights  in  the  Union,  but  government,  the  strong  arm 


REGENERATION   BEFORE   RECONSTRUCTION.  353 

of  power,  outstretched  from  the  central  authority  here  in  Wash- 
ington, making  it  safe  for  the  freedmen  of  the  South,  safe  for  her 
loyal  white  men,  safe  for  emigrants  from  the  Old  World  and  from 
the  Northern  States  to  go  and  dwell  there  ;  safe  for  Northern 
capital  and  labor,  Northern  energy  and  enterprise,  and  Northern 
ideas  to  set  up  their  habitation  in  peace,  and  thus  found  a  Christian 
civilization  and  a  living  democracy  amid  the  ruins  of  the  past. 
That,  sir,  is  what  the  country  demands  and  the  rebel  power  needs. 
To  talk  about  suddenly  building  up  independent  States  where  the 
material  for  such  structures  is  fatally  wanting,  is  nonsense.  States 
must  grow,  and  to  that  end  their  growth  must  be  fostered  and 
protected.  The  political  and  social  regeneration  of  the  country 
made  desolate  by  treason  is  the  prime  necessity  of  the  hour,  and 
is  preliminary  to  any  reconstruction,  of  States.  Years  of  careful 
pupilage  under  the  authority  of  the  nation  may  be  found  neces- 
sary, and  Congress  alone  must  decide  when  and  upon  what  condi- 
tions the  tie  rudely  broken  by  treason  shall  be  restored.  Congress, 
moreover,  is  as  solemnly  bound  to  deny  to  disloyal  communities 
admission  into  our  great  sisterhood  of  States  as  it  is  to  deny  the 
rights  of  citizenship  to  those  who  have  forfeited  such  rights  by 
treason. 

I  have  thus  far,  Mr.  Speaker,  addressed  myself  to  considera- 
tions which  appeal  to  men  of  my  own  political  faith.  There  is  a 
theory  of  reconstruction  held  by  gentlemen  on  the  other  side  of 
the  House,  according  to  which  the  rebels,  the  moment  they  laid 
down  their  arms  and  confessed  themselves  vanquished,  were 
entitled  to  resume  all  their  rights  as  citizens,  just  as  if  they  had 
not  rebelled,  and  to  set  in  motion  the  machinery  of  their  State 
governments,  be  represented  in  Congress,  and  enjoy  all  and  sin- 
gular the  rights  and  privileges  of  other  citizens  of  the  United 
States.  Sir,  I  shall  not  consume  much  time  in  noticing  this  strange 
theory,  which  was  so  happily  disposed  of  by  the  gentleman  from 
Ohio  [Mr.  Shellabarger]  on  Friday  last.  I  must,  however, 
do  its  friends  the  honor  of  confessing  it  to  be  entirely  original.  I 
think  no  such  principle  can  be  found  in  the  law  of  nations.  I  am 
quite  sure  there  is  no  historical  precedent  for  it,  and  that  the  pre- 
cedents are  strongly  the  other  way.  One  of  these,  and  a  very 
notable  one,  I  may  refer  to,  as  illustrating  the  difference  between 
the  congressional  and  presidential  theories  of  reconstruction.  I 
understand  that  when  Satan  rebelled  against  the  Almighty  he 
was  accommodated  with  quarters  somewhat  more  tropical  and  less 
salubrious  than  the  kingdom  he  had  involuntarily  abdicated.     To 

23 


354  REGENERATION   BEFORE   RECONSTRUCTION. 

speak  plainly,  lie  was  plunged  into  hell  ;  and  he  "  accepted  the 

situation."     According  to  one  account  of  the  transaction  he  said 

it  was  — 

"  Better  to  reign  in  hell  than  serve  in  heaven  ; " 

and  he  has  not  been  "reconstructed  "  to  this  day.  But  according 
to  the  modern  theory  to  which  I  refer,  the  devil,  when  he  was 
finally  overpowered  and  was  willing  to  acknowledge  it,  was  that 
moment  entitled  to  be  reinstated  in  his  ancient  rights  in  Paradise, 
exactly  as  if  he  had  not  sinned.  That  I  understand  to  be  the 
Democratic  theory  of  reconstruction.  But  Satan,  devil  as  he  was, 
never  had  the  infernal  audacity  to  insinuate  so  monstrous  a  preten- 
sion ;  and  it  was  reserved  for  the  followers  of  Andrew  Johnson, 
nearly  six  thousand  years  later,  to  startle  the  civilized  world  by  its 
avowal.  Mr.  Speaker,  let  me  not  be  misunderstood  here.  I  do 
not  desire  to  see  the  rebels  follow  in  the  footsteps  of  their  illustri- 
ous predecessor.  There  may  have  been  times  when  it  seemed  to 
me  they  deserved  a  similar  treatment.  It  may  even  have  occurred 
to  me,  in  some  of  my  profaner  moments,  that  if  there  is  not  a 
pretty  respectable  orthodox  hell  on  the  other  side  of  the  grave  for 
the  special  discipline  of  the  rebel  leaders,  it  would  seem  to  be  the 
grandest  oversight  that  divine  Providence  could  possibly  have 
committed.  But  in  confronting  the  dangers  which  now  beset  our 
country  I  put  aside  these  theological  fancies;  and  what  I  demand, 
and  all  I  ask,  is  that  Congress  shall  organize  a  well-appointed 
political  purgatory,  located  in  the  rebellious  districts,  and  keep  the 
rebels  in  it  until  by  their  penitence  and  a  change  of  their  lives 
they  shall  satisfy  us  that  they  can  again  be  trusted  with  power. 
Let  us  put  them  on  probation ;  and  should  it  require  ten  years, 
or  twenty  years,  to  qualify  them  for  restoration,  or  to  secure  an 
outside  element  strong  enough  to  rule  the  rebel  faction,  let  the 
time  be  extended.  The  grand  interests  involved  plead  with  us  to 
"  make  haste  slowly,"  while  voices  from  the  graves  of  our  slaugh- 
tered countrymen  beseech  us  to  "  keep  none  but  loyal  men  on 
guard."  When  the  rebels,  conscious  of  the  ruin  they  have 
wrought,  shall  wash  away  their  guilt  in  their  tears  of  genuine 
contrition,  then,  and  not  till  then,  let  us  restore  them  to  our  em- 
brace. 

And  now,  Mr.  Speaker,  if  any  gentleman  asks  me  what  plan  of 
government  I  would  institute  for  the  probation  and  pupilage  of 
these  districts,  I  am  ready  to  answer  him.  But  before  I  do  that  I 
desire  to  say  what  forms  of  reconstruction  I  do  not  favor.  In  the 
first  place,  I  oppose  any  cunningly  devised  scheme  like   that  re- 


REGENERATION  BEFORE   RECONSTRUCTION.  355 

ported  by  the  gentleman  from  Ohio  [Mr.  Ashley]  from  the  Com- 
mittee on  Territories,  with  its  popular  conventions,  its  committees 
of  safety,  its  provisional  governors,  and  other  machinery  designed  to 
meet  the  ugly  fact  that  we  have  a  bad  man  in  the  presidential  chair, 
whose  usurpations  it  is  pretended  we  must  checkmate  by  these  ex- 
traordinary measures.  If  the  President  has  been  guilty  of  high 
crimes  and  misdemeanors,  let  him  be  impeached  and  hurled  from 
power.  I  believe  he  is  thus  guilty,  and  therefore  I  believe  our 
first  duty  is  to  call  him  to  account.  Instead  of  gradual  ap- 
proaches and  flank  movements  we  should  confront  him  at  once  with 
our  accusations,  and  demand  his  trial.  Instead  of  lopping  off  the 
branches  we  should  strike  at  the  root  of  our  troubles,  and  no 
significance  or  insignificance  of  the  executive  office  as  now  filled 
should  stand  in  the  way  of  our  constitutional  duty.  If  the  Pres- 
ident is  not  guilty  of  high  crimes  and  misdemeanors,  in  the  sense 
in  which  those  terms  were  understood  by  our  fathers,  and  ac- 
cording to  the  precedents  they  had  before  them,  then  the  right  of 
impeachment  is  not  even  a  "  scarecrow,"  as  Mr.  Jefferson  styled 
it.  But  if  I  am  mistaken,  and  the  country  is  doomed  yet  longer 
to  endure  his  maladministration,  then  let  us  adopt  precisely  such 
measures  of  government  for  the  rebellious  districts  as  would  be 
necessary  and  proper  if  we  had  an  honest  man  in  the  place  of 
Andrew  Johnson,  thus  affording  him  the  opportunity,  should  he 
seek  it,  to  provoke  new  conflicts  with  the  people  by  opposing  our 
measures.  Should  his  madness  fail  to  supply  us,  abundantly,  with 
the  grounds  for  a  successful  impeachment,  the  sands  of  his  official 
life  will  soon  run  out  at  the  worst,  while  the  management  of  the 
rebel  territory  demands  a  policy  which  may  last  for  indefinite 
years.  As  the  friends  of  the  Constitution  and  the  champions  of 
law,  we  can  best  perform  our  duty  by  adhering  to  the  well-settled 
forms  and  usages  of  our  republican  institutions. 

I  oppose,  in  the  second  place,  any  plan  of  reconstruction  which 
attempts  to  reconcile  opposite  and  utterly  irreconcilable  theories. 
If  the  rebellious  districts  are  States,  known  to  the  Constitution  as 
such,  they  have  the  right  to  be  represented  on  this  floor  and  in 
the  other  end  of  the  Capitol.  They  have  all  the  rights  of  the 
other  independent  States  of  the  Union,  and  the  work  of  recon- 
struction is  done  already.  The  logic  of  this  theory,  if  accepted, 
not  only  vindicates  the  policy  of  the  President,  but  brands  the 
legislation  of  Congress  for  nearly  six  years  past  as  a  deliberate 
usurpation.  This  is  the  rebel  theory,  and  those  who  have  accepted 
it,  with  all  its  consequences,  are  consistent  and  brave  men   who 


356  REGENERATION  BEFORE   RECONSTRUCTION. 

are  entitled  to  the  thanks  of  all  the  enemies  of  their  country. 
But  if  you  reject  this  theory,  then  you  are  driven  squarely  over 
to  the  policy  of  unqualified  Radicalism,  for  there  is  no  middle 
ground  on  which  to  stand.  If  these  districts  are  not  States  known 
to  the  Constitution,  it  must  follow  inevitably  that  the  Constitution 
knows  them  only  as  Territories,  for  which  Congress  is  bound  by 
the  express  words  of  the  Constitution  to  "  make  all  needful  rules 
and  regulations."  Sir,  I  am  opposed  to  any  scheme  of  compro- 
mise between  these  theories,  and  to  any  plan  of  reconstruction 
which  embodies  in  it  any  elements  of  the  rebel  theory.  The  policy 
of  Congress  and  the  President  in  recognizing  those  districts  as 
States,  wdiile  exercising  over  them  powers  utterly  inconsistent  with 
the  rights  of  States,  has  brought  upon  us  our  worst  troubles,  and 
the  sooner  we  abandon  it  the  better  it  will  be  for  the  country. 
The  nation  needs  a  manly  and  straightforward  ^>olicy,  and  not  the 
weakness  and  vacillation  which  spring  from  crooked  and  ambidex- 
trous measures  which  lend  strength  to  the  enemies,  of  the  Re- 
public. 

Mr.  Speaker,  the  theory  which  deals  with  the  rebellious  districts 
as  under  the  exclusive  jurisdiction  of  Congress  rests  upon  grounds 
which  are  logically  impregnable.  In  the  first  place,  their  old  con- 
stitutional governments  were  overthrown  and  destroyed  by  the  re- 
bellion. This  will  not  be  disputed.  Second,  their  rebel  govern- 
ments, which  followed,  were  destroyed  by  our  arms.  This  is 
equally  certain.  Third,  their  present  governments,  extemporized 
by  the  President,  are  military  and  provisional  only,  having  no 
validity  whatever  save  that  which  they  borrow  from  the  continued 
acquiescence  of  Congress.  The  President  himself  can  be  quoted 
in  support  of  this  position.  And  fourth,  the  rebels  themselves, 
having  forfeited  all  their  rights  by  their  treason,  as  I  have  alreadv 
shown,  have  no  authority  to  institute  any  sort  of  government 
within  their  respective  districts,  until  they  are  expressly  empow- 
ered so  to  do  by  Congress.  If  I  am  right  in  these  positions,  these 
districts  are  so  many  geographical  divisions  of  the  Republic  whose 
people  are  wholly  without  any  valid  civil  government,  and  without 
any  constitutional  power  to  frame  such  government  ;  and  being 
solely  under  the  jurisdiction  of  Congress,  and  having  none  of  the 
powers  and  attributes  of  States,  they  are  necessarily  Territories  of 
the  United  States.  As  such  they  need  government  til]  they  are  pre- 
pared for  readmission,  and  the  machinery  of  territorial  govern- 
ments, older  than  the  Constitution  itself,  is  as  familiar  to  the  Amer- 
ican people  as  that  of  the  State  governments.     Let  each  of  these 


REGENERATION  BEFORE   RECONSTRUCTION.  357 

Territories  then  have  a  governor,  a  chief  justice,  a  marshal,  and 
an  attorney.  Let  each  of  them  have  a  delegate  in  Congress,  fitly 
denied  the  right  to  vote,  while  permitted  to  speak.  Let  each  have 
a  Legislature  for  the  enactment  of  local  laws,  subject  to  the  super- 
vision of  Congress.  Let  Congress  declare  who  shall  be  qualified 
to  vote  in  these  Territories,  adopting  the  same  rule  already  estab- 
lished in  the  other  Territories  of  the  United  States  and  in  the  Dis- 
trict of  Columbia.  And  when  local  supremacy  shall  defy  the 
national  authorities  in  any  of  these  Territories,  let  it  be  effectually 
cured  by  the  military  power  of  the  United  States.  Under  this  edu- 
cational process  I  would  have  these  rebellious  districts  trained  up 
in  the  way  they  should  go,  whether  the  time  required  for  such 
training  shall  prove  long  or  short  ;  while  in  the  mean  time  every 
inch  of  their  soil  will  be  subject  to  the  national  authority,  and 
freely  open  to  the  energy  and  enterprise  of  the  world.  This  pol- 
icy, by  nationalizing  the  South,  would  render  life  and  property  as 
secure  in  Louisiana  as  in  Maine.  It  would  tend  powerfully  to 
make  our  whole  country  homogeneous.  It  would  encourage  in 
these  wasted  regions  "  small  farms,  thrifty  tillage,  free  schools, 
closely  associated  communities,  social  independence,  respect  for 
honest  labor,  and  equality  of  political  rights."  All  these  blessings 
must  follow,  if  only  the  nation,  having  vanquished  its  enemies,  will 
now  resolutely  assert  its  power  in  the  interest  of  loyal  men  over 
regions  in  which  nothing  but  power  is  respected. 

To  all  this,  Mr.  Speaker,  it  will  be  objected  that  it  contravenes 
the  policy  of  the  constitutional  amendment  proposed  by  Congress 
at  our  last  session,  and  therefore  cannot  in  good  faith  be  urged 
while  that  amendment  is  pending.  Several  replies  to  this  objec- 
tion are  at  hand.  First,  it  must  be  remembered  that  this  amend- 
ment was  submitted  to  the  several  States.  Congress  had  no  right 
to  propose  it  to  unorganized  districts  which  had  no  constitutional 
governments  of  any  sort,  and  therefore  no  power  to  pass  upon  the 
question.  Could  we,  for  example,  submit  this  amendment  to  Col- 
orado or  Nebraska,  before  they  have  been  lawfully  declared  States  ? 
Congress,  at  the  last  session,  might  have  waived  all  formalities  and 
recognized  the  rebellious  districts  as  States  by  receiving  their  rep- 
resentatives, as  was  done  in  the  case  of  Tennessee  ;  but  we  re- 
fused to  do  this.  Congress  even  declined  to  pass  the  bill  reported 
from  the  Reconstruction  Committee  providing  that  these  so-called 
States  should  be  received  on  their  acceptance  of  the  amendment. 
It  is  perfectly  certain,  therefore,  that  Congress  reserved  for  its 
future  judgment  the  very  question  which  is  assumed  to  have  been 


358  [REGENERATION   BEFORE   RECONSTRUCTION. 

decided  by  the  objection  under  notice  ;  or,  that  if  Congress  did  de- 
cide it  the  decision  was  the  other  way.  The  very  utmost  that  can 
be  claimed  by  the  champions  of  the  constitutional  amendment  is 
that  the  question  is  an  open  one ;  and,  being  an  open  question, 
Congress  may  decide  it  to-day  by  putting  territorial  governments 
over  these  regions,  leaving  the  amendment  to  the  disposition  of  the 
loyal  States,  whose  representatives  in  Congress  for  nearly  six  years 
past  have  ignored  the  existence  of  disloyal  States  in  dealing  with 
the  mighty  concerns  of  war  and  peace  and  the  amendment  of  the 
Constitution  itself.  I  believe  the  pending  amendment  will  be  rat- 
ified ;  but  in  voting  to  submit  it  I  do  not  think  Congress  is  at  all 
embarrassed  in  its  present  action.  I  can  say,  for  myself  at  least,  that 
I  am  perfectly  untrammeled,  either  by  my  votes  in  this  House  or 
by  pledges  or  commitals  anywhere  ;  while  I  believe  the  general 
understanding  at  the  last  session  was  that  the  amendment  embod- 
ied provisions  which  were  demanded  as  national  safeguards,  with- 
out pretending  to  supply  any  final  solution  of  the  problem  of  re- 
construction. 

But  I  reply,  in  the  next  place,  that  even  if  Congress  at  the  last 
session  bound  itself  by  an  implied  agreement  to  admit  these  dis- 
tricts as  States  on  their  ratification  of  the  amendment,  we  are  now 
released  from  that  obligation.  With  singular  unanimity  and  em- 
phasis they  have  rejected  our  proposal,  and  thereby  left  us  free. 
Sir,  are  we  bound  to  wait  here  five  years,  or  ten  years,  for  them 
to  ponder  the  question  and  reverse  their  decision,  after  they  have 
already  defiantly  spurned  our  offer,  allowing  the  rebel  power  in 
the  mean  while  to  have  free  course  ?  I  do  not  so  understand  the 
bargain,  if  any  bargain  has  been  made.  We  have  the  right  to 
plead  our  release,  and  the  state  of  the  country  demands  that  we 
shall  exercise  it.  Since  our  session  of  last  summer  great  changes 
have  been  wrought  in  the  general  feeling  of  the  people.  We  see 
daily  the  truth  of  the  old  adage  that  "  circumstances  alter  cases." 
Public  opinion  has  forced  Congress  to  establish  manhood  suffrage 
in  the  District  of  Columbia,  and  thereby  to  say  that  that  principle 
should  prevail  in  all  the  States  of  the  Union.  Congress  has  ex- 
tended it  over  all  the  Territories  of  the  United  States,  constituting 
an  empire  large  enough  to  support  a  population  of  two  hundred 
million  people.  Congress  has  voted  for  the  admission  of  Colorado 
and  Nebraska  on  the  fundamental  condition  of  their  acceptance  of 
the  same  principle,  and  thus  advertised  all  whom  it  may  concern 
that  other  States  yet  to  be  born  must  comply  with  the  same  con- 
dition.    Most  certainly  the  like  requirement  will  be  made  of  the 


REGENERATION  BEFORE  RECONSTRUCTION.    359 

districts  lately  in  arms  against  us,  whatever  may  betide  the  consti- 
tutional amendment.  God  forbid  that  we  should  impose  conditions 
upon  virgin  States  of  the  Northwest  which  have  never  rebelled, 
and  whose  people  to-day  are  loyal,  which  we  will  not  exact  of  the 
rebels  who  have  drenched  their  country  in  blood !  Sir,  we  cannot 
trifle  with  a  principle  so  vital,  or  expose  it  to  any  sort  of  hazard. 
I  voted  last  year  against  restoring  Tennessee  to  her  place  in  the 
Union,  because  I  feared  she  could  not  be  trusted  without  a  mort- 
gage from  her  securing  the  ballot  to  her  colored  loyalists.  I  hope 
my  fears  will  prove  groundless,  but  I  shall  never  regret  my  vote. 
The  loyal  people  of  Maryland  to-day,  black  and  white,  would  be 
safer  under  federal  bayonets  than  under  their  local  government ; 
and  Congress,  where  it  has  the  power,  must  exert  it  against  the 
enemies  of  the  country  and  their  sympathizers.  I  shall  never  vote 
to  restore  one  of  these  rebel  districts  to  power  as  a  State,  except 
upon  the  condition  that  impartial  suffrage,  without  respect  to  race, 
color,  or  former  condition  of  slavery,  shall  be  the  supreme  law 
within  her  borders.  Sir,  we  can  no  longer  evade  the  solemn  duty 
which  the  logic  of  events  has  at  last  made  plain  to  all  lovers  of 
justice  ;  and  the  man  who  now  thrusts  constitutional  amendments 
in  our  way  might  as  well  quote  the  Crittenden  resolutions,  adopted 
by  this  House  the  day  following  the  first  battle  of  Bull  Run,  as 
the  governing  principle  of  the  Thirty-ninth  Congress. 

I  add,  finally,  and  as  a  conclusion  from  what  I  have  said  already, 
that  the  second  section  of  the  proposed  amendment  ought  never  to 
be  made  a  part  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  It  would 
not  now  be  proposed,  if  the  question  were  pending  as  a  new  one, 
as  our  action  at  this  session  has  plainly  indicated.  I  voted  for  it, 
along  with  the  other  sections  of  the  amendment,  simply  as  a  pro- 
posal to  reduce  the  political  power  of  the  rebels  to  a  common  level 
with  that  of  loyal  men  ;  but  instead  of  cutting  down  representa- 
tion in  these  districts  to  the  basis  of  actual  suffrage,  I  think  we  are 
now  ready  so  to  extend  the  franchise  as  to  make  it  commensurate 
with  actual  representation.  An  amendment  of  the  Constitution 
securing  this  result  should  have  been  proposed  at  the  last  session. 
When,  in  our  extremity,  we  called  on  the  black  loyalists  of  the 
South  to  help  us  through  the  red  sea  of  war  into  which  our  wick- 
edness had  plunged  us,  and  they  responded  to  our  call  by  sending 
two  hundred  thousand  soldiers  to  our  rescue,  it  thenceforward  be- 
came the  nation's  duty,  from  which  no  escape  was  morally  possible, 
to  secure  the  rights  of  citizenship,  both  civil  and  political,  to  the 
wronged  and  outraged  millions  of  the  African  race  in  our  midst. 


360  REGENERATION  BEFORE   RECONSTRUCTION. 

It  thenceforward  ought  to  have  been  counted  a  shameful  proposi- 
tion, a  flagrant  affront  to  common  justice  and  gratitude,  for  Con- 
gress to  propose  to  the  rebels  as  a  constitutional  amendment  that 
if  they  would  agree  to  the  exclusion  of  these  loyal  colored  men 
from  the  basis  of  representation,  we  would  agree  to  surrender  them 
to  the  tender  mercies  of  rebel  State  governments  which  might 
wholly  deprive  them  of  the  sacred  right  of  representation.  Sir,  I 
hope  no  such  principle  will  ever  defile  the  Constitution  of  our 
fathers.  Aside  from  its  cold-blooded  ingratitude  to  our  black  allies, 
it  is  radically  vicious.  It  impliedly  concedes  to  the  States  of  the 
Union  the  right  to  disfranchise  male  citizens  of  the  United  States 
over  twenty-one  years  old  who  are  innocent  of  crime,  and  thus 
strikes  at  the  root  of  all  democracy.  If  "  taxation  without  repre- 
sentation is  tyranny,"  and  governments  derive  "  their  just  powers 
from  the  consent  of  the  governed,"  the  citizen's  right  of  represen- 
tation is  as  natural  and  inherent  as  the  breath  of  his  nostrils.  To 
deprive  him  of  it,  unless  he  himself  forfeits  it  by  his  offenses 
against  society,  is  a  crime  against  his  manhood,  which  is  the  com- 
mon foundation  of  the  rights  of  all  men.  It  is  an  offense  against 
all  free  government ;  for  the  right  of  one  citizen  to  a  voice  in  its 
public  administration  is  precisely  the  same  as  the  right  of  every 
other  citizen ;  and  no  fraction  of  citizens,  however  large,  can  de- 
prive the  remainder  of  their  common  and  equal  right.  To  deny 
this  is  to  mock  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  insult  the 
memory  of  our  fathers  ;  and  to  incorporate  the  denial  into  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States,  in  words  which  express  or  imply  it, 
would  strengthen  the  hands  of  every  rebel  in  the  South,  and  com- 
fort the  enemies  of  American  democracy  throughout  the  world. 
It  would  pollute  the  very  fountains  of  our  national  life  by  the  un- 
natural marriage  of  the  Constitution  to  the  foul  heresy  of  State 
Rights,  which  so  recently  wrapped  the  Republic  in  the  flames  of 
war  ;  while  it  would  stand  in  open  conflict  with  that  grand  central 
principle  of  our  great  Charter  which  declares  that  "  the  United 
States  shall  guarantee  to  every  State  in  this  Union  a  republican 
form  of  government." 


IMPEACHMENT    OF    PRESIDENT    JOHNSON. 

HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES,  DECEMBER  11,  18G7. 

[As  Mr.  Julian  was  among  the  first  and  most  zealous  of  those  who  demanded  the 
impeachment  of  President  Johnson,  this  brief  speech  is  here  reprinted.  It  is  selected 
from  among  others  on  the  same  subject  because  it  condenses  into  a  few  vigorous  par- 
agraphs the  real  grounds  of  impeachment,  and  appropriately  places  the  opponents  of 
the  measure  upon  the  defensive.] 

After  the  Journal  was  read,  Mr.  Julian  asked  and  obtained  leave 
to  make  a  personal  explanation,  and  preliminary  thereto  had  read 
at  the  Clerk's  desk  the  following  paragraph  from  the  Washington 
correspondence  of  the  "  New  York  Tribune  "  :  — 

"  Of  the  fifty-seven  members  who  voted  for  the  resolution  it  must  not  be 
thought  that  all  sincerely  desired  the  impeachment  of  the  President.  The  Indi- 
ana delegation  which  voted  almost  solidly  in  the  affirmative,  did  so  in  the  belief 
that  some  future  deed  of  the  President  would  justify  their  course.  Others 
voted  for  impeachment,  well  knowing  that  it  could  not  be  carried,  on  the  prin- 
ciple that  their  action  would  seem  bold,  and  might  be  quoted  with  effect  in 
future  canvasses.  Had  the  passage  of  the  resolution  depended  on  the  votes  of 
these  gentlemen  they  would  have  been  found  against  it ;  but  there  were  prob- 
ably forty  men  who  were  convinced  that  the  testimony  justified  the  House  in 
bringing  the  President  to  a  trial,  though  they  did  not  undertake  to  usurp  the 
functions  of  the  Senate  in  judging  of  his  innocence  or  guilt." 

Mr.  Julian  then  proceeded  :  — 

This  is  certainly  a  remarkable  display  of  the  freedom  of  the 
press,  and  I  must  claim  the  right  to  refer  to  that  portion  of  the 
extract  which  relates  to  the  Indiana  delegation.  The  writer  says 
we  voted  for  impeachment  because  we  believed  "  that  some  future 
deed  of  the  President  would  justify  "  our  course.  Sir,  I  do  not 
speculate  about  the  future  deeds  of  the  President.  I  know  the 
past,  and  in  the  light  of  the  past  the  Indiana  delegation  judged  of 
their  duty,  and  acted.  That  the  President  will  pause  in  his  career  of 
maladministration  and  crime  I  do  not  for  a  moment  believe.  His 
capacity  for  evil  stands  out  in  frightful  disproportion  to  his  other 
gifts.  He  is  a  genius  in  depravity,  and  not  merely  "  an  obstinate 
man  who  means  honestly  to  deal  with  "  the  problem  of  recon- 
struction. His  hoarded  malignity  and  passion  have  neither  been 
fathomed  nor  exhausted,  and  will  not  be  during  his  term  of  office. 


362  IMPEACHMENT   OF   PRESIDENT  JOHNSON. 

If  I  may  judge  of  the  effect  of  the  President's  late  message  of  de- 
fiance, acting  on  the  inflammable  temper  of  Southern  rebels,  and 
followed  swiftly  by  the  strong  vote  of  this  House  renouncing  its 
jurisdiction  over  his  crimes,  I  can  have  no  hesitation  in  believing 
that  a  new  dispensation  of  rapine  and  misrule  will  be  the  result. 
This  will  be  morally  and  logically  inevitable ;  and  while  I  respect- 
fully commend  it  to  the  consideration  of  gentlemen  who  voted 
against  impeachment,  I  desire  to  say  in  behalf  of  myself  and  the 
five  of  my  colleagues  who  voted  with  me  that  in  the  vote  we  gave 
we  assumed  no  jurisdiction  whatever  over  acts  of  the  President 
which  have  not  yet  transpired.  We  had  neither  the  right  nor  the 
disposition  to  do  this,  but  were  governed  by  the  following  among 
other  good  and  sufficient  reasons  :  — 

We  voted  to  impeach  the  President  because  he  usurped  the 
power  to  call  conventions,  set  up  governments,  and  decide  the 
qualifications  of  voters,  in  seven  of  the  States  lately  in  rebellion. 

Because  he  recognized  these  oovernments  thus  unconstitution- 
ally  established  by  himself  as  valid  civil  governments,  and  con- 
demned and  denounced  Congress  for  lawfully  exercising  the  pow- 
ers and  performing  the  acts  which  he  exercised  and  performed  in 
violation  of  law  and  of  the  Constitution. 

Because  he  created  the  office  of  provisional  governor,  as  a  civil 
office,  which  is  unknown  to  the  Constitution,  and  appointed  to  such 
office  in  the  rebel  States  notorious  traitors,  well  knowing  them  to 
be  such,  and  that  they  could  not  enter  upon  the  duties  of  the  office 
without  the  crime  of  perjury. 

Because  he  deliberately  trampled  under  his  feet  a  law  of  Con- 
gress enacted  in  1862  prescribing  an  oath  of  office,  and  which  law 
he  was  sworn  to  execute,  and  appointed  to  offices  under  the  laws 
of  the  United  States  men  who  were  well  known  to  him  as  traitors, 
who  could  not  take  the  oath  required. 

Because  he  refused  to  execute  the  confiscation  laws,  and  the 
laws  against  treason,  and  by  the  most  monstrous  abuse  of  the  par- 
doning power  in  innumerable  instances  has  made  himself  the  pow- 
erful ally  and  best  friend  of  the  conquered  traitors  of  the  South, 
whose  unmatched  crimes  have  thus  utterly  defied  even  the  ordi- 
nary administration  of  criminal  justice. 

Because  the  power  of  impeachment  as  defined  in  the  Constitu- 
tion clearly  comprehends  political  offenses,  like  those  of  which  the 
President  has  been  proved  guilty  in  the  case  recently  before  the 
House,  and  would  otherwise  be  an  empty  and  unmeaning  mock- 
ery, leaving   Congress  wholly  powerless    to    protect    the    nation 


IMPEACHMENT   OF  PRESIDENT  JOHNSON.  363 

against  the  most  wanton  acts  of  Executive  maladministration  and 
lawlessness. 

And  because,  finally,  in  the  language  of  the  majority  of  the 
Judiciary  Committee,  he  has  "  retarded  the  public  prosperity,  les- 
sened the  public  revenues,  disordered  the  business  and  finances  of 
the  country,  encouraged  insubordination  in  the.people  of  the  States 
recently  in  rebellion,  fostered  sentiments  of  hostility  between  dif- 
ferent classes  of  citizens,  revived  and  kept  alive  the  spirit  of  the 
rebellion,  humiliated  the  nation,  dishonored  republican  institu- 
tions, obstructed  the  restoration  of  said  States  to  the  Union,  and 
delayed  and  postponed  the  peaceful  and  fraternal  reorganization  of 
the  Government  of  the  United  States. 

Sir,  these  are  some  of  the  reasons  which  compelled  six  of  the 
Indiana  delegation  to  vote  "  solidly  in  the  affirmative."  We  had 
no  occasion  to  carry  our  researches  into  the  future  in  order  to  find 
a  justification  for  our  votes.  And  I  desire  to  say,  sir,  as  emphat- 
ically as  I  can,  that  under  our  view  of  the  evidence  and  the  law 
there  was  but  one  alternative  left  us.  We  could  not  allow  our 
sense  of  duty,  under  the  oaths  we  have  taken,  to  be  swayed  by 
any  calculations  as  to  the  effect  of  impeachment  upon  the  finances 
of  the  country,  or  upon  our  own  party  relations,  or  upon  the  suc- 
cess of  the  Republican  party  next  year.  Neither  could  we  pause 
to  consider  whether  the  impeachment  would  be  sustained  in  the 
Senate,  or  whether  it  would  provoke  the  President  to  renewed 
acts  of  violence  and  render  him  more  devil-bent  than  before.  We 
had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  considerations  of  this  character. 
Sir,  impeachment  is  not  a  policy,  but  a  solemn  duty  under  the 
Constitution,  which  expressly  provides  for  its  performance.  The 
"  New  York  Tribune  "  itself  says  that  "  impeachment  is  the  con- 
stitutional safeguard  between  the  people  and  a  dictatorship.  To 
regard  the  Presidency  as  an  intact,  independent  office,  responsible 
only  to  the  moral  influence  called  '  the  people,'  and  to  a  political 
mob  called  '  a  convention,'  is  to  make  our  ruler  as  absolute  as  the 
Emperor  of  China." 

Sir,  not  to  impeach  in  a  case  fairly  requiring  it  is  itself  an  act 
revolutionary  and  rebellious  in  its  character.  So  the  Indiana  del- 
egation believed,  and  so  they  acted  under  their  sworn  duty  of 
fidelity  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  And  having  so 
believed  and  acted  they  have  no  apologies  to  make,  no  man's  par- 
don to  beg,  and  no  favors  to  ask  in  any  quarter.  In  common  with 
the  fifty-seven  members  who  voted  in  the  affirmative,  and  the  one 
hundred  and  eight  who  voted  in  the  negative,  we  shall  be  judged 


364  IMPEACHMENT   OF   PRESIDENT  JOHNSON. 

by  the  people.  None  of  us  can  "  escape  history,"  and  for  one  I 
am  willing  to  accept  its  final  vex'dict.  I  only  beg  leave  to  say,  in 
conclusion,  that  if  the  leading  newspapers  of  the  country  had  al- 
lowed the  people  to  see  the  report  in  full  of  the  majority  of  the 
Judiciary  Committee,  the  correspondent  of  the  "  Tribune  "  would 
probably  have  felt  le,ss  inclined  to  volunteer  an  apology  for  the  In- 
diana delegation  which  is  as  dishonorable  to  himself  as  to  them. 


SPOLIATION    OF    THE    PUBLIC    DOMAIN— THE 
SAVING  REMEDY. 

HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES,  MARCH  6,  1868.1 

[This  speech,  prepared  with  great  care  and  considerable  labor,  was  published  as 
a  campaign  document  for  the  national  canvass  of  1868.  It  will  be  found  to  embody 
important  facts  bearing  upon  a  great  question,  which  is  commanding  a  constantly 
increasing  interest.] 

Mr.  Speaker,  — Perhaps  there  is  no  question  affecting  the  civil 
administration  of  the  government  which  more  deeply  concerns  the 
people  of  the  United  States  than  that  which  is  submitted  in  the 
bill  I  have  had  the  honor  to  report  from  the  Committee  on  Public 
Lands.  It  touches  all  the  springs  of  our  national  life  and  well 
being.  It  makes  its  appeal  to  every  landless  citizen  of  the  Re- 
public, and  to  every  foreigner  who  comes  to  our  shores  in  search 
of  a  home.  It  reaches  down  to  the  very  foundations  of  demo- 
cratic equality,  and  takes  hold  on  the  coming  ages  of  industrial 
development  and  Christian  civilization  in  the  rapidly  multiplying 
States  of  our  Union.  Had  the  policy  now  proposed  been  accepted 
by  the  nation  a  generation  ago,  before  its  magnificent  patrimony 
had  been  so  grievously  marred  and  wasted  by  legislative  profli- 
gacy and  plunder,  the  gratitude  of  millions  would  have  attested 
the  blessed  results,  the  failure  of  which  millions  must  deplore. 
Not  a  single  hour  of  further  delay  should  stay  the  friendly  hand 
of  Congress  in  rescuing  the  remaining  heritage  of  a  thousand 
million  acres  from  the  improvident  administration  of  the  past. 

Before  proceeding  to  the  general  discussion  of  this  measure  it 
may  be  well  briefly  to  refer  to  its  particular  provisions,  and  their 
effect  in  modifying  the  action  of  its  controlling  principle.  It  for- 
bids the  further  sale  of  the  public  lands,  except  as  provided  for 
in  the  preemption  and  homestead  laws.  These  laws  have  been 
improved  by  repeated  amendments  which  have  been  suggested 
by  experience,  and  their  machinery  is  understood  by  the  people 
Under  the  preemption  laws  the  settler  may  select  his  home  on 
the  surveyed  or  unsurveyed  lands,   and  perfect  his  title    on  the 

i  On  the  bill  to  prevent  the  further  sale  of  agricultural  lands,  except  as  provided  for 
in  the  preemption  aud  homestead  laws. 


366  SPOLIATION   OF   THE  PUBLIC   DOMAIN. 

easy  conditions  of  settlement  and  improvement,  and  the  payment 
of  $1.25  per  acre.  Under  the  homestead  laws  like  conditions  of 
settlement  and  improvement  are  required,  but  the  claimant  is 
restricted  to  the  surveyed  lands,  and  the  payment  of  $1.25  per 
acre  is  only  required  where  he  shall  decide  to  perfect  his  title  at 
once  by  the  purchase  of  his  homestead,  which  he  may  do  after 
the  required  improvement  has  been  made.  The  purpose  of  both 
the  preemption  and  homestead  laws  is  the  settlement  and  tillage 
of  the  public  domain  by  those  who  need  homes,  and  the  option  is 
given  to  every  settler  to  determine  under  which  class  of  laws  he 
can  best  subserve  his  interest. 

The  bill  reserves  to  the  holders  of  military  bounty  land  warrants, 
agricultural  college  scrip,  and  other  land  scrip,  the  right  to  locate 
the  same.  This  could  not  be  otherwise.  However  mistaken  or 
pernicious  the  policy  of  issuing  these  warrants  and  this  scrip  may 
now  be  regarded,  the  faith  of  the  nation  is  plighted  that  they  may 
be  located  according  to  the  terms  prescribed  by  Congress.  Lands 
selected  for  town  sites  are  likewise  expressly  excepted  from  the 
operations  of  the  bill,  because  their  disposition  is  already  provided 
for.  An  act  for  the  disposal  of  coal  lands  and  town  sites  on  the 
public  domain,  approved  July  1,  1864,  and  the  act  amendatory 
thereto  of  March  3,  1865,  make  special  provision  for  the  disposi- 
tion of  such  lands,  and  properly  withdraw  them  from  the  scope  of 
this  bill. 

Mineral  lands  are  also  excepted,  and  for  kindred,  though  less 
conclusive  reasons.  The  peculiar  character  of  these  lands  calls  for 
peculiar  legislation  ;  and  the  Act  of  Congress  of  July  26,  1866, 
undertook  to  deal  with  them.  The  act  is  singularly  crude  and 
clumsy,  and  very  few  persons  thus  far  have  even  attempted  to  as- 
sert title  under  it.  Its  history  is  not  less  remarkable.  It  passed 
the  Senate  near  the  close  of  the  first  session  of  the  Thirty-ninth 
Congress,  without  any  previous  general  discussion  by  the  members 
of  that  body.  On  reaching  the  House  it  was  referred  to  the  Com- 
mittee on  Public  Lands,  which  at  once  proceeded  to  consider  it, 
and  to  reconstruct  its  leading  features.  This  did  not  suit  its  friends 
in  the  Senate,  who  caused  it  to  be  attached  to  the  enacting  clause 
of  a  bill  then  pending  in  that  body,  entitled  "  An  act  granting  the 
right  of  way  to  ditch  and  canal  owners  over  the  public  lands  in 
the  States  of  California,  Oregon,  and  Nevada."  Under  this  strange 
title  it  wras  reenacted  in  the  Senate  ;  and  on  finding  its  way  to  the 
Speaker's  table  during  the  closing  hours  of  the  session  it  was 
hurried  through  the  House  in  utter  disregard  of  the  rights  of  the 


SPOLIATION  OF  THE  PUBLIC  DOMAIN.  367 

committee  having  it  in  charge,  without  any  opportunity  whatever 
for  general  discussion,  without  even  the  pretense  that  its  provisions 
were  understood,  and  by  parliamentary  tactics  which,  if  generally 
adopted,  would  convert  the  business  of  legislation  into  a  system  of 
gambling  in  which  the  very  titles  of  our  laws  would  brand  them 
as  the  progeny  of  knavery  and  fraud.  The  remarkable  decline  in 
the  product  of  bullion  during  the  past  year  is  undoubtedly  due,  to 
a  considerable  extent,  to  the  uncertainty  of  titles  in  the  great  min- 
ing regions  and  the  need  of  a  fixed  code  of  laws  ;  and  since  there 
is  a  bill  now  pending  here  amendatory  of  the  law  under  notice, 
and  its  manifest  faults  must  necessarily  lead  to  its  perfection,  there 
is  no  occasion  to  deal  Avith  the  question  in  the  measure  now  be- 
fore the  House. 

With  these  qualifications,  Mr.  Speaker,  the  bill  I  have  reported 
withdraws  from  further  sale  the  public  domain  of  the  United 
States,  and  dedicates  it,  in  reasonable  homesteads,  to  actual  settle- 
ment and  productive  wealth  ;  and  it  is  this  fundamental  and  far- 
reaching  principle  to  which  I  now  invite  the  attention  of  this 
House  and  of  the  country. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  hold  it  to  be  a  clear  proposition  that  the  govern- 
ment, as  the  servant  of  the  people,  is  bound  to  render  the  territory 
under  its  control  as  productive  as  possible.  Both  political  economy 
and  the  law  of  nature  sanction  this  principle.  The  government  has 
no  right  to  withhold  its  vacant  lands  from  tillage  while  its  own 
citizens  desire  them  for  homesteads,  and  are  willing  to  make  them 
contribute  to  the  general  wealth.  "  Nothing,"  says  Locke,  "  was 
made  by  God  for  man  to  spoil  or  destroy."  Vattel  declares  that 
the  cultivation  of  the  soil  is  "  a  profession  that  feeds  the  human 
race;"  that  it  is  "the  natural  employment  of  man,"  and  "an 
obligation  imposed  by  nature  on  mankind  ;  "  and  that  therefore  it 
"  deserves  the  utmost  attention  of  the  government."  He  says, 
"  The  sovereign  ought  to  neglect  no  means  of  rendering  the  land 
under  his  jurisdiction  as  well  cultivated  as  possible.  He  ought  not 
to  allow  either  communities  or  private  persons  to  acquire  large 
tracts  of  land  and  leave  them  uncultivated."  He  adds,  "  The 
whole  earth  is  destined  to  feed  its  inhabitants  ;  but  this  it  would 
be  incapable  of  doing  if  it  were  uncultivated.  Every  nation  is  then 
obliged  by  the  law  of  nature  to  cultivate  the  land  that  has  fallen 
to  its  share."  "  The  earth,"  says  the  "  Westminster  Review," 
"  is  the  great  mother  which  all  should  regard  with  filial  reverence. 
To  the  earth  we  owe  alike  our  lives  and  our  pleasures,  and  if  there 
be  an  excess  of  poverty  and  misery  among  men  it  is  because  the 


368  SPOLIATION    OF   THE   PUBLIC  DOMAIN. 

earth  is  not  tilled  in  such  a  manner  as  to  yield  the  maximum  of 
the  necessaries  of  life."  "  No  man,"  says  John  Stuart  Mill,  "  made 
the  land.  It  is  the  original  inheritance  of  the  whole  species ;  " 
and  he  declares  that  "  wherever,  in  any  country,  the  proprietor, 
generally  speaking,  ceases  to  be  the  improver,  political  economy 
has  nothing  to  say  in  defense  of  landed  property  as  there  estab- 
lished." These  authorities,  which  could  readily  be  multiplied,  are 
simply  the  echo  of  common  sense.  They  are  the  voice  of  reason 
and  justice,  affirming,  in  different  forms  of  speech,  the  scriptural 
truth  that  the  earth  belongs  "  to  the  children  of  men." 

If,  then,  the  Divine  command  to  "  subdue  the  earth,"  that  is, 
to  improve  it,  and  compel  it  to  yield  of  its  abundance,  is  binding 
upon  the  government  as  well  as  the  citizen,  we  are  naturally  con- 
ducted to  the  inquiry,  What  policy  ought  it  to  pursue  in  order  to 
secure  the  maximum  of  productiveness  ?  And  my  answer  is,  the 
policy  of  resisting,  by  all  practicable  methods,  the  monopoly  of 
the  soil,  while  systematically  aiming  at  the  multiplication  of  small 
homesteads,  which  shall  be  tilled  by  their  proprietors.  On  this 
subject,  Mr.  Speaker,  we  are  not  left  in  the  dark.  I  shall  not 
now  dwell  upon  the  negative  side  of  the  argument.  I  shall  not 
stop  to  portray  the  evils  of  land  monopoly,  which,  in  the  words  of 
a  celebrated  French  writer,  "  has  gnawed  social  order  from  the 
beginning  of  the  world."  The  subject  is  an  inviting  one,  but  I 
propose  here  only  to  consider  the  profitableness  of  small  landed 
proprietorships  in  the  light  of  known  facts.  I  believe  political 
economists  are  agreed  that  the  true  interest  of  agriculture  is  to 
widen  the  field  of  its  operations  as  far  as  practicable,  and  then,  by 
a  judicious  tillage,  to  make  it  yield  the  very  largest  resources  com- 
patible with  the  population  of  the  country.  Experience  has  abun- 
dantly shown  that  the  system  of  small  proprietorships  can  best 
secure  these  results,  while  it  brines  with  it  great  moral  and  social 
advantages  which  are  unknown  in  countries  that  are  cursed  by 
overgrown  estates.  I  regret  that  any  argument  or  elucidation  of 
this  point  should  be  deemed  necessary  in  a  government  which 
recognizes  equal  rights  and  equal  laws  as  the  basis  of  its  policy  ; 
but  the  manifest  tendency,  in  multiplied  forms,  toward  land 
monopoly  in  our  country,  and  especially  in  the  West  and  South, 
must  excuse  some  little  particularity  of  statement. 

One  of  the  highest  authorities  on  this  subject  is  Mr.  Kay's  book 
on  "  The  Social  Condition  and  Education  of  the  People  in  Eng- 
land and  Europe."  He  speaks  from  personal  observation  and 
travel  in  many  countries  in  different   parts  of  the  Continent,  and 


SPOLIATION   OF   THE   PUBLIC  DOMAIN.  369 

declares  that  "  the  peasant  farming  of  Prussia,  Saxony,  Holland, 
and  Switzerland,  is  the  most  perfect  and  economical  farmino-  I  have 
ever  witnessed  in  any  country."  He  quotes  with  favor  the  decided 
opinion  of  another  writer,  that  "  not  only  are  the  gross  products  of 
any  given  number  of  acres  held  and  cultivated  by  small  proprietors 
greater  than  the  gross  products  of  an  equal  number  of  acres  held 
by  a  few  great  proprietors,  and  cultivated  by  tenant  farmers,  tut 
that  the  net  products  of  the  former,  after  deducting  all  the  ex- 
penses of  cultivation,  are  also  greater  than  the  net  products  of  the 
latter."  Mr.  Laing,  another  writer  of  authority,  in  his  "  Notes  of 
a  Traveller,"  says  :  "  We  see,  and  there  is  no  blinking  the  fact, 
better  crops  on  the  ground  in  Flanders,  East  Friesland,  Holstein, 
in  short,  on  the  whole  line  of  the  arable  land  of  equal  quality  on 
the  Continent,  from  the  Sound  to  Calais,  than  we  see  on  the  line 
of  British  coast  opposite  to  this  line,  and  in  the  same  latitudes, 
from  the  Frith  of  Forth  all  round  to  Dover."  And  he  adds  that 
"  minute  labor  on  small  portions  of  arable  ground  gives  evidently, 
in  equal  soils  and  climate,  a  superior  productiveness,  when  these 
small  portions  belong  to  the  farmer."  Mr.  Kay  says  that  "  in 
Saxony  it  is  a  notorious  fact  that,  during  the  last  thirty  years,  and 
since  the  peasants  became  the  proprietors  of  the  land,  there  has 
been  a  rapid  and  continual  improvement  in  the  condition  of  the 
houses,  in  the  manner  of  living,  in  the  dress  of  the  peasants,  and 
particularly  in  the  culture  of  the  land."  He  observes  that  "  the 
peasants  endeavor  to  outstrip  one  another  in  the  quantity  and 
quality  of  the  produce,  in  the  preparation  of  the  ground,  and  in 
the  general  preparation  of  their  respective  portions.  All  the  little 
proprietors  are  eager  to  find  out  how  to  farm  so  as  to  produce  the 
greatest  results  ;  they  diligently  seek  after  improvements ;  they 
send  their  children  to  the  agricultural  schools  in  order  to  fit  them 
to  assist  their  fathers  ;  and  each  proprietor  soon  adopts  a  new  im- 
provement introduced  by  any  of  his  neighbors." 

Sismondi,  in  his  "Studies  in  Political  Economy,"  says:  -"It  is 
from  Switzerland  we  learn  that  agriculture,  practiced  by  the  very 
persons  who  enjoy  its  fruits,  suffices  to  procure  great  comfort  for 
a  very  numerous  population  ;  a  great  independence  of  character, 
arising  from  independence  of  position  ;  a  great  commerce  or*  con- 
sumption, the  result  of  the  easy  circumstances  of  all  the  inhabi- 
tants, even  in  a  country  whose  climate  is  rude,  whose  soil  is  but 
moderately  fertile,  and  where  late  frosts  and  inconstancy  of 
seasons  often  blight  the  hopes  of  the  cultivator."  Speaking  of 
small  landholders  generally,  he  says :  "  Wherever  we  find  peasant 

24 


370  SPOLIATION   OF   THE   PUBLIC   DOMAIN. 

proprietors  we  also  find  the  comfort,  security,  confidence  in  the 
future,  and  independence  which  assure  at  once  happiness  and 
virtue.  The  peasant  who,  with  his  children,  does  all  the  work  of 
his  little  inheritance  ;  who  pays  no  rent  to  any  one  above  him  nor 
wages  to  any  one  below  ;  who  regulates  his  production  by  his 
consumption  ;  who  eats  his  own  corn,  drinks  his  own  wine,  is 
clothed  in  his  own  hemp  and  wool,  cares  little  for  the  prices  of 
the  market ;  for  he  has  little  to  sell  and  little  to  buy,  and  is  never 
ruined  by  revulsions  of  trade."  And  he  insists  that  "  the  peasant 
proprietor  is,  of  all  cultivators,  the  one  who  gets  most  from  the 
soil,  for  he  is  the  one  who  thinks  most  of  the  future,  and  who  has 
been  most  instructed  by  experience.  He  is  also  the  one  who 
employs  the  human  powers  to  the  most  advantage,  because,  divid- 
ing his  occupations  among  all  the  members  of  his  family,  he 
reserves  some  for  every  day  of  the  year,  so  that  nobody  is  ever  out 
of  work." 

Mr.  Howitt,  in  his  "  Rural  and  Domestic  Life  of  Germany," 
says :  "  The  peasants  are  not,  as  with  us,  for  the  most  part,  totally 
cut  off  from  property  in  the  soil  they  cultivate,  totally  dependent 
on  the  labor  afforded  by  others  —  they  are  themselves  the  proprie- 
tors. It  is,  perhaps,  from  this  cause  that  they  are  probably  the 
most  industrious  peasantry  in  the  world.  They  labor  busily,  early 
and  late,  because  they  feel  that  they  are  laboring  for  themselves. 
Every  man  has  his  house,  his  orchard,  his  road-side  trees,  com- 
monly so  heavy  with  fruit  that  he  is  obliged  to  prop  and  secure 
them  always,  or  they  would  be  torn  to  pieces.  He  has  his  corn- 
plat,  his  plat  for  mangel-wurzel,  for  hemp,  and  so  on.  He  is  his 
own  master ;  and  he,  and  every  member  of  his  family,  have  the 
strongest  motives  to  labor."  He  contrasts  him  with  the  English 
peasant,  who  "  is  so  cut  off  from  the  idea  of  property  that  he 
comes  habitually  to  look  upon  it  as  a  thing  from  which  he  is 
warned  by  the  laws  of  the  large  proprietors,  and  becomes,  in  con- 
sequence, spiritless,  purposeless.  The  German  bauer,  on  the  con- 
trary, looks  on  the  country  as  made  for  him  and  his  fellow-men. 
He  feels  himself  a  man  ;  he  has  a  stake  in  the  country  as  good  as 
that  of  the  bulk  of  his  neighbors  ;  no  man  can  threaten  him  with 
ejection  or  the  work-house  so  long  as  he  is  active  and  economical. 
He  walks,  therefore,  with  a  bold  step  ;  he  looks  you  in  the  face 
with  the  air  of  a  free  man,  but  of  a  respectful  one." 

Small  farming  in  France  forms  no  exception  to  these  strong 
testimonies.  Arthur  Young,  in  his  "  Travels  in  France,"  says  : 
"  An  activity  has  been  here  that  has   swept  away  all  difficulties 


SPOLIATION   OF   THE  PUBLIC   DOMAIN.  371 

before  it,  and  has  clothed  the  very  rocks  with  verdure.  It  would 
be  a  disgrace  to  common  sense  to  ask  the  cause;  the  enjoyment  of 
property  must  have  done  it.  Give  a  man  the  sure  possession  of  a 
bleak  rock,  and  he  will  turn  it  into  a  garden  ;  give  him  a  nine 
years'  lease  of  a  garden,  and  he  will  convert  it  into  a  desert." 
Speaking  of  the  country  at  the  foot  of  the  Western  Pvrenees,  he 
says:  "It  is  all  in  the  hands  of  little  proprietors,  without  the  farms 
being  so  small  as  to  occasion  a  vicious  and  miserable  population. 
An  air  of  neatness,  warmth,  and  comfort,  breathes  over  the  whole. 
It  is  visible  in  their  new-built  houses  and  stables ;  in  their  o-ardens : 
in  their  hedges  ;  in  the  courts  before  their  doors  ;  even  in  the 
coops  for  their  poultry  and  the  sties  for  their  hogs." 

But  I  need  not  further  multiply  authorities  in  support  of  my 
position  ;  nor  shall  I  attempt  to  demonstrate  what  is  quite  apparent 
from  the  quotations  I  have  made,  that  the  policy  of  small  home- 
steads, on  which  the  man  who  holds  the  plough  is  the  owner  of  the 
soil,  is  favorable  to  the  highest  degree  of  industry  and  thrift ;  that 
it  becomes  the  instrument  of  popular  education  through  the  self- 
dependence  of  the  cultivator,  whose  mental  faculties  are  thus  nat- 
urally stimulated  and  developed  by  the  cares  and  responsibilities 
brought  to  his  door ;  and  that  it  favors,  also,  the  moral  virtues  of 
prudence,  temperance,  and  self-control.  All  this  is  asserted  by 
our  ablest  political  economists.  Neither  shall  I  dwell  here  upon 
the  fact  that  it  supplies  the  strongest  bond  of  union  between  the 
citizen  and  the  State,  and  is  absolutely  necessary  in  a  well-ordered 
Commonwealth.  Putting  all  this  aside,  and  coming  back  to  my 
two  cardinal  principles —  the  duty  of  the  government  in  behalf  of 
the  people  to  make  its  lands  as  productive  as  possible,  and  the 
necessity  of  accomplishing  this  end  by  small  holdings,  tilled  by 
their  proprietors  —  I  proceed  to  notice  the  startling  commentary 
upon  these  principles  which  has  been  furnished  by  the  Government 
of  the  United  States. 

The  Commissioner  of  the  General  Land  Office  estimates  that 
from  the  foundation  of  the  government  to  the  present  time  more 
than  thirty  millions  of  acres  of  the  aggregate  amount  of  public 
lands  sold  have  not  been  reduced  to  occupancy  as  farms.  This 
would  have  made  one  hundred  and  eighty-seven  thousand  five 
hundred  homesteads  of  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres  each,  and 
should  have  been  disposed  of  to  actual  settlers  only,  as  fast  as 
it  was  needed,  instead  of  being  handed  over  to  speculators  and 
locked  up  from  tillage  and  productive  wealth.  Just  to  the  extent 
that  this  has  been  done  the  government  has  been  the  plunderer 


372  SPOLIATION    OF   THE   PUBLIC   DOMAIN. 

of  the  people.  It  has  gone  into  partnership  with  the  speculator 
in  cheating  the  pioneer  and  the  producer,  -while  robbing  the  na- 
tional treasury.  During  the  last  fiscal  year  nearly  two  millions  of 
acres  of  homestead  entries  have  been  made,  of  which  over  two  hun- 
dred and  sixty-four  thousand  acres  have  been  entered  in  the  South- 
ern land  States  under  the  Act  of  June  21,  1866.  The  total  area 
of  the  public  domain  absorbed  under  the  homestead  laws  up  to  the 
30th  of  June  last  exceeds  seven  millions  of  acres,  represented  by 
over  fifty-nine  thousand  farms.  This  policy  creates  national  wealth, 
and  gives  homes  to  the  laboring  poor.  It  most  righteously  fosters 
the  pursuit  which  Vattel  declares  to  be  "  the  natural  employment 
of  man,"  and  which  "  feeds  the  human  race."  Every  new  farm 
that  is  snatched  from  the  wilderness  adds  to  the  wealth  of  the 
nation,  while  the  monopoly  of  millions  of  acres  which  are  withheld 
from  cultivation  is  a  positive  public  curse.  It  is  computed  that  in 
the  year  1835  alone  about  eight  millions  of  acres  of  the  public 
domain  passed  into  the  hands  of  speculators.  The  money  thus 
invested  was  withdrawn  from  praiseworthy  enterprises  and  the 
ordinary  uses  of  commerce,  and  sunk  in  the  forests  of  the  West 
which  were  allowed  to  yield  no  return.  Great  stretches  of  these 
wrild  lands  thus  intervened  between  settlements  which  were  after- 
ward formed,  since  the  poor  pioneer  could  not  pay  the  price  at 
which  they  were  held,  and  was  forced  still  further  into  the  wilder- 
ness, where  he  was  compelled,  by  his  toils  and  privations,  to  add 
to  the  wealth  of  these  remorseless  monopolists. 

This  system  of  legalized  landlordism  in  these  States,  this  prac- 
tical inauguration  among  us  of  the  feudalism  of  the  Old  World,  is 
the  very  climax  of  legislative  madness.  It  cheats  the  poor  settler, 
and  by  dooming  vast  tracts  of  fertile  lands  to  barrenness  becomes 
a  fatal  hinderance  to  agricultural  wealth,  and  to  commerce  and 
manufactures  which  draw  their  life  from  the  soil.  Instead  of 
flourishing  towns  and  villages,  small  homesteads,  and  an  inde- 
pendent yeomanry,  with  the  attendant  blessings  of  churches  and 
free  schools,  it  consigns  the  fertile  plains  of  the  West  to  the  tender 
mercies  of  the  monopolist,  whose  greed  alone  is  his  law.  Instead 
of  opening  our  vacant  lands  to  the  stream  of  emigration  which 
would  pour  in  from  the  old  States,  and  thus  augmenting  our  im- 
ports and  exports  through  increased  production,  it  leaves  the 
country  a  wilderness,  or  inhabited  only  by  a  miserable  tenantry 
under  the  control  of  absentee  landlords.  Instead  of  settling  the 
frontier  of  our  country  and  extending  the  march  of  civilization,  it 
subjects  the  government  to  the  expenditure  of  millions  of  dollars  in 


SPOLIATION  OF  THE   PUBLIC   DOMAIN.  373 

sustaining  military  posts  which  else  might  be  wholly  dispensed  with. 
Instead  of  taking  the  pioneer  into  the  fatherly  keeping  of  the  gov- 
ernment, and  stimulating  the  spirit  of  adventure  by  the  offer  of  a 
free  home  in  the  wilderness,  it  treats  him  as  a  virtual  outcast  by 
driving  him  beyond  the  possessions  of  the  speculator,  for  whose 
interest  he  is  compelled  to  toil.  This  is  by  far  the  worst  feature 
of  our  present  land  policy.  The  pioneer  subdues  the  forest  and 
coins  it  into  wealth.  He  encounters  every  form  of  hardship  and 
danger  in  opening  the  way  for  the  column  of  settlers  which  is  to 
follow,  while  his  life  is  one  of  constant  privation.  The  settlers  of 
our  frontier  are  the  real  heroes  of  our  time.  They  are  the  founders 
of  new  Commonwealths,  and  are  ready  to  encounter  either  wild 
beasts  or  savages  in  exploring  our  distant  borders.  They  build 
wagon  roads,  bridges,  towns,  and  cities,  and,  by  surrounding  the 
reserved  lands  of  the  speculator  and  rendering  them  desirable, 
add  greatly  to  the  wealth  which  he  has  done  nothing  to  earn. 
Surely  these  persons  have  a  better  right  to  be  consulted  in  the 
disposition  of  the  public  domain  than  the  men  who  buy  large 
tracts  with  perhaps  no  expectation  of  ever  seeing  them  again  or 
of  expending  a  dollar  in  their  improvement. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  have  referred  to  the  thirty  millions  of  acres  here- 
tofore sold  by  the  government  which  yet  remain  unimproved.  This, 
of  course,  is  only  a  small  fraction  of  the  grand  aggregate  which 
from  time  to  time  must  have  passed  under  the  dominion  of  monop- 
olists, and  has  since  been  gradually  reduced  to  cultivation  by  pay- 
ing their  tariff  for  the  privilege.     Nothing   could  be   more  vicious 

o  too 

in  principle  or  more  ruinous  to  the  public  interest  than  has  been 
this  policy.  The  government,  since  its  formation,  has  sold  more 
than  one  hundred  and  fifty-four  millions  of  acres  ;  and  I  think  I 
am  safe  in  asserting,  after  careful  consideration,  that  the  nation 
has  derived  from  these  lands  less  than  one  half  the  agricultural 
wealth  which  they  would  have  yielded  under  the  policy  for  which 
I  now  contend,  if  it  had  been  adopted  in  the  beginning.  Sir,  I  ask 
gentlemen  to  ponder  these  facts,  and  say  whether  the  land  policy 
of  the  United  States  has  not  been  a  policy  of  systematic  improvi- 
dence and  spoliation.  Every  one  remembers  the  saying  of  Dean 
Swift,  that  "  whoever  could  make  two  ears  of  corn  or  two  blades 
of  grass  to  grow  upon  a  spot  of  ground  where  only  one  grew  be- 
fore would  deserve  better  of  mankind,  and  do  more  essential  ser- 
vice to  his  country,  than  the  whole  race  of  politicians."  Has  not 
our  government  supplied  a  new  and  striking  commentary  on  this 
saying  in  sporting  with  one  of  the  grandest  opportunities  the  world 


374  SPOLIATION   OF   THE   PUBLIC   DOMAIN. 

has  seen  for  the  creation  of  wealth  and  the  establishment  of  Demo- 
cratic institutions?  One  of  the  charges  against  the  British  king 
which  our  fathers  preferred  in  their  great  declaration  was,  that 
"  he  has  endeavored  to  prevent  the  population  of  these  States  ;  for 
that  purpose  obstructing  the  laws  for  naturalization  of  foreigners, 
refusing  to  pass  others  to  encourage  their  migration  hither,  and 
raising  the  conditions  of  new  appropriations  of  lands."  Is  not  our 
government  guilty,  substantially,  of  this  same  charge  ?  Has  not  its 
policy  tended  strongly  "  to  prevent  the  population  of  these  States," 
by  abridging  the  inducements  of  our  people  to  seek  homes  on  the 
public  domain  ?  And,  as  to  foreigners,  has  not  its  policy  of  specula- 
tion and  monopoly  amounted  to  a  refusal  "  to  pass  laws  to  encourage 
their  migration  hither,"'  while  "  raising  the  conditions  of  new  appro- 
priations of  lands  ?  "  Sir,  let  us  emancipate  the  public  domain  yet 
remaining  under  our  care.  Let  us  dedicate  it  to  honest  toil,  to 
American  homes,  to  productive  wealth,  and  thus  complete  the  work 
so  nobly  begun  in  the  preemption  and  homestead  laws.  Let  us  re- 
member that  in  setting  free  the  public  lands  of  the  government 
and  placing  them  beyond  the  power  of  monopolists,  we  shall  be- 
come the  creators  of  wealth  and  the  benefactors  of  coming  genera- 
tions ;  and  that  the  ablest  political  economist  of  our  time  declares 
the  acquisition  of  a  permanent  interest  in  the  soil  by  the  cultivators 
of  it  to  be  as  real  and  as  great  an  improvement  in  production, 
as  the  invention  of  the  spinning-jenny  or  the  steam-engine. 

But  I  pass  to  a  separate  though  kindred  topic,  namely,  the 
grants  made  by  Congress  to  aid  in  building  railroads.  These  have 
been  exceedingly  munificent,  and  have  become  a  most  formidable 
barrier  to  the  settlement  and  cultivation  of  our  great  domain. 
Congress  has  granted  in  all,  to  various  Western  and  Southern 
States,  over  fifty-seven  millions  of  acres  for  these  purposes.  These 
grants  have  been  made  on  such  conditions  that  the  companies  to 
whom  the  alternate  odd-numbered  sections  are  intrusted  can  hold 
them  back  from  sale  and  settlement  till  such  time,  and  for  such 
price,  as  may  best  subserve  their  interest.  The  lands  become  at 
once  a  monopoly,  and  the  rights  of  settlers  are  perfectly  subor- 
dinated to  its  purposes.  The  company  may  sell  or  refuse  to  sell  ; 
it  may  sell  to  individual  settlers  or  to  a  single  purchaser.  No  re- 
straints are  imposed  in  these  particulars.  The  even-numbered 
sections  are  likewise  reserved  from  sale,  except  for  the  price  of 
$2.50  per  acre.  Unless,  therefore,  the  road  is  between  points  and 
through  a  country  rendering  its  speedy  construction  very  impor- 
tant, both  the  odd  and  even  numbered  sections  are  kept  back  from 


SPOLIATION   OF   THE   PUBLIC   DOMAIN.  375 

settlement ;  and  the  further  effect  of  this  will  be  to  hinder  settle- 
ments which  otherwise  would  be  formed  adjacent  to  the  interdicted 
belt.  This  policy  sometimes  builds  roads,  which  are  highly  impor- 
tant ;  but  it  often  inflicts  great  mischief  upon  the  country  by  its 
discriminations  against  our  pioneer  settlers. 

Besides  these  grants  to  the  States  we  have  donated,  on  similar 
conditions,  for  the'construction  of  canals  and  other  improvements, 
over  seventeen  millions  of  acres  ;  and  we  have  gi'anted  to  the  differ- 
ent lines  of  the  Pacific  Railroad  the  estimated  aggregate  of  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty-four  millions  of  acres.  These  roads  are  of  the 
greatest  national  importance,  and  therefore  have  a  very  strong  plea 
to  make  in  justification  of  the  grants  made  by  Congress  ;  but  they 
constitute  a  fearful  monopoly,  and  may  hinder,  far  more  than  help, 
the  actual  settlement  and  improvement  of  our  great  Western  ter- 
ritory. The  several  grants  I  have  named  amount  to  little  short  of 
two  hundred  millions  of  acres  ;  and  if  we  add  to  this  the  even- 
numbered  sections  along  the  lines  of  the  Pacific  road,  which  are 
excluded  from  settlement  under  a  recent  ruling  of  the  Interior 
Department,  we  shall  have  an  aggregate  of  about  one  third  of  the 
nation's  entire  public  domain  committed  to  the  keeping  of  railroad 
corporations.  "  The  quantity  of  lands  conveyed  by  these  grants," 
says  the  Commissioner  of  the  General  Land  Office,  "  is  of  empire 
extent,  exceeding  in  the  aggregate,  by  more  than  five  millions  of 
acres,  the  entire  areas  of  the  six  New  England  States,  added  to  the 
surface  of  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  Delaware, 
Maryland,  and  Virginia."  He  says  the  grants  to  the  Pacific  rail- 
way lines  alone  "  are  within  about  a  fourth  of  being  twice  the 
united  area  of  England,  Scotland,  Wales,  Ireland,  Guernsey,  Jer- 
sey, the  Isle  of  Man,  and  the  islands  of  the  British  Seas,  and  less 
than  a  tenth  of  being  equal  to  the  French  empire  proper." 

These  are  significant,  if  not  startling  facts,  and  they  naturally 
awaken  alarm  among  the  multitudes  of  our  people  now  seeking 
settlements  under  the  preemption  and  homestead  laws  throughout 
the  West.  I  have  recent  letters  from  intelligent  men  in  the  To- 
peka  land  district  in  Kansas,  who  say  that,  owing  to  the  land 
grants  referred  to  and  the  Indian  reservations  as  administered'  by 
the  government,  it  has  become  next  to  impossible  to  secure  a 
homestead  that  is  at  all  desirable  in  that  portion  of  the  State,  and 
that  many  settlers  who  have  travelled  hundreds  of  miles  to  find 
their  homes,  on  which  they  have  settled  in  good  faith,  are  being 
driven  out  by  railroad  agents.  I  believe  the  time  has  come  to 
sound  the  cry  of  danger,  and  to  demand,  in  the  name  of  our  pio- 


376  SPOLIATION   OF  THE  PUBLIC  DOMAIN. 

neer«  and%  producers,  a  radical  reform  in  the  policy  of  the  govern- 
ment as  to  any  future  grants  it  may  make  in  aid  of  these  enter- 
prises. All  such  grants  should  be  rigidly  subordinated  to  the  par- 
amount purpose  of  securing  homes  for  the  people,  the  settlement 
and  improvement  of  the  public  domain,  and  the  consequent  in- 
crease of  national  wealth.  A  bill  inaugurating  this  principle  has 
already  been  reported  to  this  House  from  the  Committee  on  Pub- 
lic Lands,  and  I  earnestly  hope  it  will  become  a  law.  It  provides 
that  in  all  future  grants  to  aid  in  building  railroads  the  odd-num- 
bered sections  shall  be  sold  only  to  actual  settlers,  in  quantities  not 
exceeding  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres,  for  a  price  not  exceeding 
the  maximum  of  $2.50  per  acre,  and  that  any  even  sections  which 
shall  remain  undisposed  of  at  the  expiration  of  ten  years  shall  be 
subject  to  the  same  disposition  as  all  other  public  lands. 

In  addition  to  this  greatly  needed  change  of  policy,  Congress 
should  provide  for  two  other  reforms.  In  the  first  place,  the  road 
asking  the  grant  should  be  an  important  thoroughfare,  and  espe- 
cially in  the  matter  of  extending  settlements  and  civilization  more 
rapidly  than  otherwise  would  be  practicable.  Such  grants  are 
only  specially  needed  in  the  case  of  long  lines  of  road,  which  con- 
nect distant  points,  and  pass  over  thinly  inhabited  sections  of  coun- 
try. Experience  has  showji  that  roads  will  not  be  built  except 
through  settlements  which  will  supply  a  local  business,  or  as  con- 
necting links  between  important  centres  of  trade  and  population. 
The  Commissioner  of  the  General  Land  Office,  in  his  report  for  the 
year  1865,  justly  remarks,  that  if  upon  any  part  of  the  line  a  road 
gets  less  land  it  is  because  there  is  larger  population  and  conse- 
quently more  local  business  ;  and  if  upon  any  part  of  the  line  more 
land  is  obtained  it  is  because  the  reverse  is  true.  Yet  in  every  in- 
stance it  will  be  found  that  the  road  is  first  constructed,  and  best 
compensating  to  the  stockholders,  along  that  part  of  its  line  on 
which  little  or  no  public  land  is  obtained.  A  road  passing  through 
a  region  of  country  which  invites  settlements  will  be  built,  if 
needed,  without  any  grant  of  lands,  because  settlements  will  be 
formed  and  the  wants  of  the  people  will  necessitate  it.  The  actual 
settlement  of  a  new  country  is,  after  all,  the  paramount  concern 
both  of  the  government  and  the  people.  With  this,  capital  will 
gradually  come  in,  and  such  lines  of  railroad  as  are  found  to  be 
needed  will  be  constructed.  Without  this,  railroads  would  be  un- 
profitable enterprises,  even  if  it  were  practicable  to  build  them. 

The  second  reform  to  which  I  refer  is  that  a  fixed  lateral  limit 
shall  be  made  tb  the  grant,  and  that  the  principle  of  alternate  sec- 


SPOLIATION   OF  THE  PUBLIC  DOMAIN.  377 

tions  in  place  shall  be  rigidly  adhered  to.  The  failure  to  observe 
these  requirements  has  wrought  great  mischief  to  the  country  and 
to  our  pioneer  settlers.  Our  land-grant  policy,  as  at  first  inaugu- 
rated, gave  every  alternate  odd-numbered  section  for  six  miles  in 
extent  on  each  side  of  the  road.  This  limit  should  never  have 
been  enlarged  except  in  the  case  of  a  few  roads  of  very  great  na- 
tional utility.  By  keeping  within  these  limits,  and  of  course  grant- 
ing no  alternate  sections  except  those  literally  corresponding  and 
contiguous  to  the  even  sections,  the  value  of  the  latter  would  be 
duplicated,  and  thus  the  government,  while  securing  the  road  and 
promoting  the  settlement  of  the  country,  would  be  financially  the 
gainer  also.  But  by  enlarging  the  lateral  limits  as  we  have  done, 
to  ten  miles,  and  in  several  instances  to  twenty,  and  even  forty 
miles,  and  allowing  floats  or  scrip  beyond  this  margin,  in  lieu  of 
lands  not  found  within  it,  the  whole  policy  of  compensation  to  the 
government  is  overthrown,  and  our  grants  become  a  practical 
bounty  to  railroad  corporations,  at  the  expense  of  actual  settlers, 
and  to  the  great  injury  of  the  country.  These  floats  will,  of  course, 
be  located  at  once  upon  all  the  choice  lands  nearest  the  line  of  the 
road,  and  to  the  settled  portions  of  the  country.  The  preemptor 
and  the  homestead  settler  will  be  driven  further  back  by  the 
grant,  and  in  the  interests  of  monopolists  who  will  grow  rich  by 
withholding  their  lands  from  settlement  till  a  handsome  price  can 
be  had  through  the  improvement  of  adjoining  lands.  The  pioneer 
must  surrender  the  advantages  of  roads,  mills,  schools,  churches, 
and  such  other  blessings  as  belong  to  a  well-ordered  community, 
for  the  somewhat  imaginary  compensation  of  a  railroad  forty  or 
fifty  miles  distant.  Many  gentlemen  now  here  may  remember  a 
bill  which  was  reported  to  this  House  in  the  Thirty-ninth  Con- 
gress, providing  for  the  construction  of  a  road  more  than  four  hun- 
dred miles  in  length,  and  granting  the  odd-numbered  alternate 
sections  to  the  amount  of  twenty  sections  per  mile  on  each  side  of 
the  road,  with  the  privilege  of  going  ten  miles  further,  if  neces- 
sary, to  make  up  deficiencies  occasioned  by  the  sale  or  other  dis- 
position of  any  of  the  alternate  sections  by  the  government  prior 
to  the  definite  location  of  the  road.  The  passage  of  this  frightful 
measure  was  earnestly  urged  in  the  House,  but  was  luckily  de- 
feated ;  and  the  ability,  now  and  then,  to  aid  in  strangling  such 
legislative  monsters  before  their  birth  may  be  set  clown  among  the 
consolations  of  public  life.  In  some  instances  we  have  granted 
the  even-numbered  sections,  and  we  have  several  times  made 
large  grants,  to  be  selected  in  a  body,  where  the  principle  involved 


378  SPOLIATION   OF   THE   PUBLIC   DOMAIN. 

in  the  policy  of  alternate  sections  could  have  no  possible  applica- 
tion. Every  year  bears  witness  to  new  aggressions  upon  the 
rights  of  settlers,  which  seriously  threaten  to  swallow  up  the  whole 
of  our  remaining  public  domain. 

Sir,  this  policy  is  utterly  indefensible  and  vicious,  and  should  be 
abandoned  at  once.  I  will  not  go  quite  so  far  as  some  gentlemen 
on  this  floor,  and  oppose  all  grants  of  land  in  aid  of  railroads,  un- 
der whatsoever  restrictions.  In  legislative,  as  in  other  affairs,  the 
want  of  discrimination  is  the  want  of  common  sense.  "  Good 
roads,"  says  Mill,  in  his  "  Political  Economy,"  "  are  equivalent  to 
good  tools.  It  is  of  no  consequence  whether  the  economy  of 
labor  takes  place  in  extracting  the  produce  from  the  soil  or  in  con- 
veying it  to  the  place  where  it  is  to  be  consumed.  Railways 
and  canals  are  virtually  a  diminution  of  the  cost  of  production  of 
all  things  sent  to  market  by  them."  These  enterprises  have  done 
and  are  still  doing  a  great  service  to  our  country.  Let  the  gov- 
ernment, by  all  honorable  means,  lend  them  its  aid;  but  let  Con- 
gress see  to  it,  henceforward,  that  the  saving  reforms  I  have 
suggested  shall  be  applied. 

Mr.  Speaker,  the  picture  I  have  drawn  of  the  fearful  strides  of 
land  monopoly  in  our  country,  under  the  sanction  of  Congress, 
would  be  imperfect  without  referring  to  some  additional  and  strik- 
ing facts  which  fairly  belong  to  this  discussion.  The  Act  of  Con- 
gress of  1862,  providing  for  the  establishment  of  agricultural  col- 
leges, grants  to  the  States  thirty  thousand  acres  of  the  public  lands 
for  each  of  their  senators  and  representatives  in  Congress.  When 
the  provisions  of  this  act  shall  be  extended  to  the  States  of  the 
South,  as  they  doubtless  will  be,  the  whole  amount  required  will 
be  nine  million  six  hundred  thousand  acres.  The  States  hav- 
ing public  lands  within  their  limits  will  receive  and  have  set 
apart  to  them  their  respective  shares  under  the  act,  which,  of 
course,  will  be  so  many  great  monopolies,  managed  with  a  view  to 
the  largest  revenue  to  aid  in  the  building  of  colleges,  and  not  in 
the  interest  of  settlers.  The  States  having  no  public  lands  get 
their  respective  shares  in  college  scrip  representing  them,  which 
scrip  cannot  be  located  by  the  States,  but  must  be  sold  to  individ- 
uals who  may  locate  it,  provided  that  not  more  than  one  mill- 
ion acres  shall  be  selected  in  any  State.  I  do  not  know  the  present 
market  value  of  this  scrip,  but  it  has  been  largely  dealt  in  at  rates 
ranging  from  sixty  to  seventy  cents  per  acre  ;  and  probably  this  is 
as  much  as  the  States  have  generally  received  for  it,  instead  of 
$1.25  per  acre,  which  the  land  ought  to  be  worth. 


SPOLIATION   OF   THE  PUBLIC   DOMAIN.  379 

Mr.  Driggs  :  I  will  state  that  I  knew  one  instance  where  the 
entire  college  scrip  of  a  State  was  offered  as  low  as  thirtv-seven 
and  a  half  cents  an  acre. 

Mr.  Julian  :  As  a  method  of  building  colleo-es,  therefore  it  is 
by  no  means  a  success ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  scrip  o-oes 
into  the  hands  of  speculators,  and  becomes  the  basis  of  the  most 
pernicious  monopolies  that  have  afflicted  our  country.  Bodies  of  a 
million  acres  have  already  been  appropriated  in  several  of  our 
Western  States,  and  set  apart  by  this  policy  of  legalized  plunder, 
on  which,  of  course,  no  homestead  claimant  or  preemptor  may  set 
his  foot.  The  country  is  held  back  from  tillage  and  productive 
wealth,  and  the  rights  of  our  pioneer  settlers  postponed  or  denied, 
by  the  duly  authorized  rapacity  of  hungry  monopolists.  A  com- 
pany of  speculators,  doing  business  in  Cleveland,  Ohio,  and  in 
Wall  Street,  New  York,  advertise  that  they  have  bought  the  col- 
lege scrip  of  nine  States  which  they  mention,  covering  two  mill- 
ions four  hundred  and  eighty-two  thousand  acres.  They  hold  it 
for  speculation,  and,  of  course,  take  no  thought  as  to  the  settle- 
ment and  improvement  of  the  public  domain.  If  it  was  the  duty 
of  the  government  to  aid  in  building  agricultural  colleges  it  would 
have  been  far  wiser  to  appropriate  money,  leaving  the  lands  of  the 
country  free  to  those  who  desired  them  for  homes,  and  were  ready 
to  transmute  their  labor  into  national  wealth.  Kindred  observa- 
tions apply  to  our  Mexican  bounty  land  warrants,  which  cover 
over  thirteen  millions  of  acres  in  all. 

Another  powerful  incentive  to  the  spirit  of  monopoly  has  been 
the  action  of  Congress  respecting  what  are  called  "  swamp  and 
overflowed  lands."  There  have  been  patented  to  States,  under 
different  acts  of  Congress,  more  than  forty-three  millions  of  acres 
of  these  lands,  and  the  management  of  them,  whether  in  the 
Western  or  Southern  States,  has  been  most  unfortunate.  This  is 
especially  true  of  the  States  of  Mississippi,  Louisiana,  Arkansas, 
and  Florida,  which  have  received  nearly  twenty-eight  millions  of 
acres.  Of  these  lands  large  portions  are  dry,  and  among  the  very 
best  in  the  country,  but  they  were  purchased  in  great  bodies  by 
speculators,  and  to  this  day  continue  in  their  clutches.  According 
to  official  tables  furnished  by  the  General  Land  Office  there  are 
now  in  the  five  land  States  of  the  South  more  than  fifty-two  mill- 
ions of  acres  of  unimproved  lands  held  by  monopolists,  while  four- 
teen fifteenths  of  their  people,  outside  of  the  towns  and  cities,  in 
an  exclusively  agricultural  region,  are  landless.  These  are  very 
sad  facts,  and  the  solution  of  them  constitutes  the  real  problem  of 


380  SPOLIATION   OF   THE   PUBLIC   DOMAIN. 

reconstruction.  They  are  further  aggravated  by  the  railroad 
monopolies  of  these  States,  covering  several  millions  of  acres,  by 
Spanish  grants  in  some  of  them,  and  by  plantation  ideas  as  well  as 
plantation  manners  which  have  survived  the  institution  of  slavery. 
Time,  patience,  and  the  policy  of  colonization  from  other  States, 
must  finally  work  out  the  redemption  of  these  regions.  One  good 
step  has  already  been  taken  in  the  passage  of  the  Southern  Home- 
stead Law  ;  but  no  one  can  contemplate  the  situation  of  their  peo- 
ple to-day,  and  the  weary  conflicts  to  which  they  are  to  be  sum- 
moned in  escaping  from  their  thralldom,  without  deploring  the 
mistake  of  the  government  in  failing  to  confiscate  the  great  planta- 
tions of  the  rebels  during  the  war,  and  decimating  them  in  the 
interests  of  loyalty  and  republicanism. 

The  action  of  the  government  in  dealing  with  our  Indian  lands 
has  been  equally  subservient  to  the  interests  of  monopolists. 
Under  our  treaties  with  the  Delaware  Indians,  made  in  1860  and 
1861,  some  two  hundred  and  thirty-four  thousand  acres  of  surplus 
Indian  lands  were  sold  to  the  Leavenworth,  Pawnee,  and  West- 
ern Railroad  Company,  instead  of  being  opened  to  actual  settlers. 
Under  another  treaty,  concluded  in  1866,  the  residue  of  these 
lands,  amounting  to  over  ninety-two  thousand  acres,  was  sold  to 
the  Missouri  River  Railroad  Company  in  the  latter  year,  thus 
creating  another  monopoly.  By  virtue  of  a  treaty  with  the  Sac 
and  Fox  Indians,  concluded  in  the  year  1859,  the  trust  lands  of 
these  Indians,  amounting  to  two  hundred  and  seventy-eight  thou- 
sand two  hundred  acres,  have  been  sold  to  thirty-six  different  pur- 
chasers, thus  creating  numerous  though  considerable  monopolies. 
As  examples,  I  may  mention  that  John  McManus  bought  one  hun- 
dred and  forty-two  thousand  nine  hundred  and  fifteen  acres  ;  Wil- 
liam R.  McKean  twenty-nine  thousand  six  hundred  and  seventy- 
seven  acres ;  Fuller  and  McDonald  thirty-nine  thousand  and 
fifty-eight  acres  ;  Robert  S.  Stevens  fifty-one  thousand  six  hundred 
and  eighty-nine  acres ;  Hon.  Hugh  McCulloch  seven  thousand 
and  fourteen  acres.  By  virtue  of  a  treaty  concluded  with  the 
Kickapoo  Indians  in  1862,  the  Atchison  and  Pike's  Peak  Railroad 
Company,  in  the  year  1865,  became  the  purchaser  of  the  lands  of 
these  Indians,  amounting  to  one  hundred  and  twenty-three  thou- 
sand eight  hundred  and  thirty-two  acres.  By  virtue  of  the  first 
article  of  a  treaty  between  the  United  States  and  the  Great  and 
Little  Osage  Indians,  concluded  in  the  year  1865,  the  said  Indians 
sold  to  the  United  States  a  tract  of  country  embracing  one  million 
nine  hundred  and  ninety-six  thousand  eight  hundred  acres  ;  and 


SPOLIATION   OF   THE   PUBLIC    DOMAIN.  381 

under  the  second  article  of  the  treaty  they  sold,  in  trust,  the  fur- 
ther quantity  of  one  million  two  hundred  and  twenty-five  thousand 
six  hundred  and  two  acres,  making  the  total  of  three  millions  two 
hundred  and  twenty-two  thousand  four  hundred  and  two  acres. 

The  treaty,  in  strange  disregard  of  the  rights  of  settlers  and  of 
the  true  interests  of  the  country,  provides  that  this  vast  area  of 
land  shall  not  be  subject  to  entry  under  the  homestead  or  preemp- 
tion laws,  but  shall  be  sold  to  the  highest  bidder ;  and,  of  course 
following  the  examples  already  set  in  other  cases,  a  swarm  of 
greedy  monopolists,  more  or  less  numerous,  will  get  the  entire 
amount.  The  land  is  already  advertised  for  sale  in  May  next, 
and  several  thousands  of  settlers  who  went  upon  it  before  the  treaty 
was  proclaimed,  many  of  them  having  made  valuable  improve- 
ments in  good  faith,  will  be  driven  out  by  speculators,  with  whom 
their  small  means  will  not  enable  them  to  compete  at  the  sale. 
Of  course  it  is  not  strange  that  these  settlers  are  now  greatly 
alarmed  and  distressed  by  the  situation  in  which  they  find  them- 
selves ;  and  the  joint  resolution  I  reported  this  morning,  which 
passed  this  House,  was  intended  as.  some  little  relief,  and  perhaps 
all  that  Congress  can  afford,  under  the  shameful  treaty  to  which  I 
have  referred. 

The  Cherokee  neutral  lands  consist  of  a  tract  fifty  miles  long 
and  twenty-five  miles  wide,  embracing  eight  hundred  thousand 
acres.  By  treaty  with  these  Indians,  concluded  in  the  year  1866, 
the  Secretary  of  the  Interior  is  authorized  to  sell  these  lands  in  a 
body,  for  a  price  not  less  than  one  dollar  per  acre  in  cash,  except 
such  tracts  as  were  settled  upon  at  the  date  of  the  treaty.  Ac- 
cordingly, in  October  last,  a  contract  was  made  for  the  sale  of 
these  lands  to  one  James  F.  Joy,  in  the  interest  of  the  Kansas 
and  Neosho  Valley  Railroad  Company,  for  the  price  named,  and 
the  directors  of  the  company,  at  a  recent  meeting,  have  resolved 
that  such  of  the  lands  as  are  now  occupied  by  bona  fide  settlers 
shall  be  valued  at  from  three  to  ten  dollars  per  acre,  and  be  sold 
to  said  settlers  at  an  average  of  six  dollars  per  acre. 

This  outrage  upon  these  people,  who  have  settled  upon  these 
lands  in  good  faith,  and  in  many  cases  made  valuable  improve- 
ments, is  simply  monstrous.  Even  the  treaty,  which  no  man  can 
defend,  and  could  have  had  no  honest  parentage,  does  not  warrant 
it.  These  settlers,  in  all  conscience,  should  have  their  lands  at 
$1.25  per  acre.  The  treaty  could  easily  have  been  so  made  as  to 
secure  to  them  this  right  beyond  question,  and  the  lands  them- 
selves, as  I  am  well  assured,  could  have  been  disposed  of  directly 


382  SPOLIATION   OF   THE  PUBLIC   DOMAIN. 

to  the  United  States,  and  subjected  at  once  to  our  ordinary  policy 
of  sale  and  preemption.  No  man  can  approve  the  conduct  of  the 
government  in  thus  joining  hands  with  monopolists  in  squandering 
the  public  domain  and  conspiring  against  the  productive  industry 
of  the  country  ;  and  since  there  yet  remain  large  quantities  of 
other  Indian  lands  to  be  disposed  of,  all  of  which  are  threatened 
by  the  reckless  policy  I  have  exposed,  the  voice  of  the  people 
should  be  earnestly  invoked  in  their  behalf  before  it  shall  be  too 
late. 

One  remarkable  instance  of  the  espousal  by  the  government  of 
the  claims  of  monopolists  against  those  of  our  pioneer  settlers  re- 
mains to  be  noticed.  It  is  of  recent  occurrence.  A  disputed 
question  involving  the  title  to  certain  lands  in  California  was  prop- 
erly brought  before  the  General  Land  Office  for  decision.  The 
parties  on  the  one  side  were  preemptors,  claiming  title  as  such 
under  the  laws  of  the  United  States.  The  chief  party  on  the 
other  side  was  a  perfectly  unprincipled  monopolist,  who  had  suc- 
ceeded by  false  representations  in  procuring  the  passage  of  an  act 
of  Congress  under  which  he  and  his  assigns  claimed  title  to  an 
invalid  Spanish  grant  of  ninety  thousand  acres,  including  the  very 
lands  of  the  preemptors  referred  to.  After  a  full  and  careful  hear- 
ing the  Commissioner  of  the  General  Land  Office  decided  in  favor 
of  the  settlers.  The  California  monopolist  thereupon  prevailed 
upon  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior  to  ask  the  advice  of  the  At- 
torney General  of  the  United  States  upon  the  points  of  law  in- 
volved, and  they  procured  from  him  an  Opinion,  declaring,  among 
other  things,  that  preemptors  on  the  public  lands  acquire  no  rights 
by  their  preliminary  acts  of  settlement  and  improvement,  and  are 
mere  tenants  at  will,  whom  the  government  may  eject  at  any  time 
before  they  have  completed  the  conditions  of  title.  The  Attorney 
General  did  not  controvert  the  fact  that  the  preemptors  were  such, 
under  the  laws  of  Congress,  but  he  denied  their  right  to  the  land  ; 
and  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior  acquiesced  in  the  decision, 
although  he  knew  it  was  not  law,  and  allowed  the  land  department 
of  the  government  to  be  used  in  dispossessing  these  settlers,  in  viola- 
tion of  the  plainest  principles  of  justice  as  well  as  law,  in  opposition 
to  numerous  and  uniform  decisions  of  our  federal  courts,  and  to 
the  whole  spirit  and  policy  of  the  government.  This  ruling,  still 
adhered  to  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior,  strikes  at  the  home- 
stead settler  as  well  as  the  preemptor,  and  is  a  mean  and  wanton 
insult  to  both.  Should  it  be  applied  in  all  cases,  as  it  was  cruelly 
done  in  this,  it  would  kindle  a  fire  throughout  the  West  which  it 


SPOLIATION   OF   THE   PUBLIC   DOMAIN.  383 

might  cost  the  government  some  pains  to  quench.  Sir,  in  the  name 
of  our  grand  army  of  pioneers,  whether  native  or  foreign  born,  I 
denounce  it.  As  I  have  said  here  on  another  occasion,  it  mocks 
justice,  sets  common  sense  at  defiance,  and  insults  judicial  decency  ; 
and  the  men  who  procured  it,  in  behalf  of  soulless  speculators  and 
landsharks,  were  engaged  in  a  most  unworthy  service.  I  must  add 
as  the  saddest  fact  of  all,  that  this  foul  plot  of  thieving  monopolists 
received  the  sanction  of  the  House  of  Representatives  of  the 
United  States,  as  shown  by  its  recorded  vote  on  the  7th  day  of 
July,  in  the  year  1866. 

Mr.  Speaker,  the  facts  I  have  submitted  should  alarm  every 
real  friend  of  our  country.  This  wholesale  prostitution  of  the 
people's  heritage,  this  merciless  crusade  against  the  rights  of  com- 
ing generations,  ought  to  cease  instantly.  It  will  tax  all  the 
wisdom  of  our  rulers  to  heal  the  wounds  already  inflicted  upon 
our  country,  and  which  have  laid  hold  on  its  very  life.  While 
the  power  of  government  to  do  good  is  limited,  and  negative  at 
best,  its  capacity  for  evil  is  practically  infinite.  It  has  been  said 
truly  that  the  influence  of  the  laws  under  which  we  live  pervades 
the  national  character,  is  felt  in  every  transaction  of  our  social  ex- 
istence, and  is  seen,  like  the  frogs  of  Pharaoh,  "  in  our  houses 
and  in  our  beds,  in  our  ovens  and  in  our  kneading-troughs."  Our 
land  policy  will  have  its  enduring  monument  in  the  very  curses 
which  it  plants  in  its  footsteps  and  writes  down  upon  the  soil.  It 
poisons  our  social  life  by  checking  the  multiplication  of  American 
homes  and  the  growth  of  the  domestic  virtues.  It  tends  to  ag- 
gregate our  people  in  towns  and  cities  and  render  them  mere 
consumers,  instead  of  dispersing  them  over  our  territor}*-  and 
tempting  them  to  become  the  owners  of  land  and  the  creators  of 
wealth.  It  fosters  the  taste  for  artificial  life  and  the  excitements 
to  be  found  in  great  centres  of  population,  instead  of  holding  up 
the  truth  that  "  God'  made  the  country  "  and  intended  it  to  be 
peopled  and  enjoyed.  It  dries  up  the  sources  of  productive 
wealth,  as  I  have  already  shown,  and  thus  fatally  abridges  the 
revenues  now  so  much  needed  in  meeting  our  national  obligations. 
As  a  mere  scheme  of  finance,  I  believe  the  passage  of  the  bill  now 
before  us  would  be  decidedly  the  best  of  the  many  which  have 
been  proposed  and  debated.  The  great  want  of  the  country  to- 
day is  more  producers,  and  to  this  end  a  policy  which  shall  draw 
from  the  older  States  and  from  our  over-crowded  cities  the  millions 
of  unemployed  men  who  are  seeking  to  live  by  their  wits,  and  to 
evade  the  command  that  "  In  the  sweat  of  thy  face  shalt  thou  eat 


384  SPOLIATION   OF   THE  PUBLIC   DOMAIN. 

bread."  This,  sir,  is  my  policy  of  finance.  The  money  which  is 
to  pay  our  debt  must  be  dug  from  the  soil  and  from  our  mines  ; 
and  whatever  decision  Congress  may  make  as  to  the  taxation  of 
our  bonds,  or  the  kind  of  money  in  which  they  shall  be  paid,  or 
the  further  contraction  or  expansion  of  the  currency,  or  the  read- 
justment of  our  tariff  and  internal  revenue  system,  our  national 
debt,  after  all,  must  be  paid.  That  hard  duty  is  unavoidably  laid 
upon  us,  and  there  is  no  royal  road  to  its  performance.  In  the 
broadest  and  best  sense  of  the  term,  therefore,  this  bill  is  a  meas- 
ure of  financial  relief;  and  should  it  become  a  law,  it  will  stand 
forth  as  a  great  landmark  in  the  legislation  of  the  country,  and  as 
the  crowning  act  of  a  policy  which  has  sought  to  find  expression 
for  more  than  fifty  years. 

In  the  early  period  of  the  government  settlements  on  the  public 
domain  were  forbidden  by  law.  In  the  year  1807  Congress  even 
provided  for  the  removal  of  persons  who  should  attempt  settle- 
ments without  authority  of  law.  This  illiberal  treatment  of  our 
pioneers  was  of  short  duration,  but  the  policy  of  preemption  was 
of  slow  growth,  and  was  only  finally  perfected  in  the  year  1841. 
Twenty-one  years  later  the  Homestead  Law  was  enacted,  recog- 
nizing still  further  the  just  claims  of  settlers  ;  but  it  allowed  the 
speculator  to  cripple  and  harass  them  at  every  step,  and  thus 
seriously  to  frustrate  the  great  and  beneficent  ends  which  other- 
wise it  would  have  perfectly  accomplished.  It  was  a  half-way 
measure  of  relief,  pointing  as  naturally  to  the  complete  remedy 
now  proposed  as  did  the  preemption  laws  point  to  the  far  broader 
policy  of  the  Homestead  Act.  Let  us  now  apply  it,  and  thus  ex- 
tend the  borders  of  our  civilization,  increase  our  national  wealth, 
curb  the  ravages  of  monopolists,  satisfy  the  earth-hunger  of  the 
multitudes  who  are  striving  for  homes  on  our  soil,  and  thus  prac- 
tically reassert  the  right  of  the  people  to  life,  liberty,  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness. 


IMPOLICY   OF    LAND    BOUNTIES  — THE    HOME- 
STEAD LAW  DEFENDED. 

IN    COMMITTEE   OF   THE  WHOLE    ON   THE   STATE    OF  THE  UNION,  JULY 

13, 1868. 

[The  subject  of  land  bounties  for  soldiers  has  been  agitated  in  Congress  ever  since 
the  close  of  the  late  war.  Several  very  indefensible,  not  to  say  monstrous  projects, 
have  from  time  to  time  been  brought  forward  and  finally  defeated,  but  the  friends 
of  these  movements  evidently  do  not  mean  to  give  the  matter  up.  This  speech, 
while  honoring  the  soldier,  seeks  to  save  the  public  domain  for  actual  settlers ;  and 
the  facts  it  sets  forth  as  to  the  action  of  Congress  and  the  Executive  Departments  of 
the  government  may  interest  both  the  soldier  and  civilian  in  the  further  consideration: 
of  the  subject.  The  vigilance  and  zeal  of  Mr.  Julian  in  guarding  the  Homestead  Law, 
at  the  great  hazard  of  being  misunderstood  by  the  soldier,  is  believed  to  have  com- 
manded the  respect  of  men  of  all  parties.] 

Mr.  Chairman,  —  I  believe  I  am  justified  in  saying  that  dur- 
ing my  service  in  this  House  I  have  steadily  defended  the  preemp- 
tion and  homestead  laws  of  the  United  States.  Whether  the 
attack  has  come  in  the  form  of  unwarranted  grants  of  land  in  aid 
of  railroads  and  other  works  of  internal  improvement,  or  atrocious 
jobs  under  the  name  of  Indian  treaties,  or  plausible  schemes  of' 
bounty  in  the  pretended  interest  of  the  soldier,  or  whatever  other 
shape  it  may  have  assumed,  I  have  constantly  and  resolutely 
maintained  the  rights  of  settlers  on  the  public  domain.  I  shall; 
not  now  change  my  course  of  action.  On  the  contrary,  every 
passing  day  invites  me  to  renewed  vigilance  and  zeal  by  revealing 
some  fresh  conspiracy  against  the  rights  of  our  pioneer  producers. 
I  have  already  discussed  at  some  length  our  general  land  policy,  its 
evils,  and  their  remedy,  during  the  present  session ;  but  I  omitted 
in  that  discussion  a  question  of  grave  magnitude,  which  I  then 
hoped  would  not  again  be  seriously  agitated  in  Congress.  I 
allude  to  the  question  of  military  land  bounties,  and  I  must  avail 
myself  of  this  occasion  to  consider  it,  and  in  doing  so  to  perform 
what  seems  to  me  an  imperative  duty. 

I  am  opposed,  very  decidedly,  to  all  schemes  providing  bounties 
in  land  for  our  soldiers.  My  opposition  is  based  upon  grounds 
which  I  desire  to  state  to  this  House  and  to  the  country,  and  which, 
in  my  judgment,  leave  no  room  for  difference  of  opinion  among 

25 


386  IMPOLICY   OF   LAND   BOUNTIES. 

intelligent  men  who  will  give  the  subject  their  attention.  One 
bounty  land  project  only  have  I  ever  supported,  and  that  was  in- 
troduced by  myself  in  the  dark  hours  of  the  war  when  our  sol- 
diers so  much  needed  its  encouragement  and  support,  while  it 
aimed  a  deadly  thrust  at  the  rebel  power.  Early  in  the  session  of 
Congress  beginning  in  December,  1863,  I  reported  from  the 
House  Committee  on  the  Public  Lands  a  bill  providing  that  all 
lands  which  should  be  sold  under  the  provisions  of  the  Act  of 
1862  for  the  collection  of  direct  taxes  in  the  insurrectionary  dis- 
tricts, and  under  the  act  of  the  same  year  to  provide  internal 
revenue  to  support  the  government,  should  be  bid  off  to  the 
United  States  at  the  minimum  price  mentioned  in  said  acts,  certi- 
fied over  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior,  and  thenceforward  be- 
come a  part  of  the  public  unappropriated  domain  of  the  United 
States.  It  further  provided  that  all  lands  against  which  pro- 
ceedings in  rem  should  be  instituted  under  the  act  to  suppress  in- 
surrection, to  punish  treason  and  rebellion,  and  to  seize  and  con- 
fiscate the  property  of  rebels,  should,  upon  the  rendering  of  final 
decrees  of  condemnation,  be  in  like  manner  certified  over  to  the 
Secretary  of  the  Interior,  and  thereafter  be  regarded  and  treated 
in  all  respects  as  a  further  extension  of  the  public  domain.  This 
bill,  supposing  the  policy  of  confiscation  to  be  exacted  by  the  gov- 
ernment, would  wrest  from  the  rebels  and  set  apart  for  loyal  uses 
from  one  half  to  three  fourths  of  the  cultivated  lands  of  the  re- 
bellious districts,  and  without  disturbing  the  rights  of  property  of 
the  great  body  of  their  people,  who  were  never  permitted  by  the 
aristocracy  to  own  land.  It  would  simply  reach  the  lands  of  the 
leading  rebels,  who  were  at  once  the  chief  landholders  and  slave- 
holders of  the  South  ;  and  it  extended  the  Homestead  Law  over 
these  lands,  under  carefully  considered  restrictions,  and  provided 
for  their  distribution  in  small  farms  among  the  soldiers  and  seamen 
of  the  Army  and  Navy  as  a  tribute  to  their  valor,  as  a  fit  chastise- 
ment of  the  rebel  chiefs,  and  as  the  basis  of  loyalty  and  democratic 
institutions  in  the  States  of  the  South.  Had  it  become  a  law, 
coupled  with  the  policy  of  striking  at  the  fee  of  rebel  landholders 
to  which  Abraham  Lincoln  finally  assented,  the  duration  of  the 
conflict  would  certainly  have  been  greatly  abridged,  while  many 
thousands  of  lives  and  many  millions  of  treasure  would  have  been 
saved.  The  great  landed  estates  of  the  South  would  have  been 
dismembered,  and  at  the  end  of  the  war  the  Freedmen's  Bureau 
would  scarcely  have  been  needed,  since  the  return  of  order  and 
peace  would   have  been  heralded  by  the  advent  of  our  loyal  sol- 


IMPOLICY   OF   LAND  BOUNTIES.  387 

diers,  with  their  muskets  as  their  companions,  prepared  to  defend 
as  well  as  till  their  homesteads,  while  ready  to  act  as  policemen 
and  avengers  in  the  protection  of  the  defenseless.  The  bill  passed 
the  House  by  a  strong  majority ;  but  it  failed  in  the  Senate,  as  did 
the  policy  of  confiscation,  through  the  hostility  of  distinguished 
conservative  fanatics  who  were  then  pettifogging  the  cause  of  the 
rebels  in  the  name  of  the  Constitution,  including  the  most  con- 
spicuous of  "  the  conscientious  seven  "  through  whose  fatal  agency 
the  country  was  handed  over  to  its  enemies  in  the  late  trial  of 
Andrew  Johnson  for  high  crimes  and  misdemeanors.  So  much, 
Mr.  Chairman,  for  land  bounties  during  the  rebellion,  the  circum- 
stances belonging  to  the  history  of  the  subject,  and  the  moral  to 
which  they  obviously  point. 

The  war  closed  in  the  spring  of  1865,  and  the  history  of  the 
agitation  respecting  soldiers'  bounties  since  that  time  is  worth  recall- 
ing. When  Congress  met  in  December  following  the  demand  for 
an  equalization  of  bounties  had  evidently  been  resolved  upon  by 
those  of  our  soldiers  who  volunteered  in  the  years  1861  and  1862. 
It  was  a  reasonable  demand,  resting  upon  the  fact  that  multitudes 
who  had  enlisted  at  the  beginning  of  the  war  and  rendered  the 
longest  service  had  received  very  little  bounty,  while  most  liberal 
bounties  were  awarded  to  those  who  came  in  toward  the  end  of 
the  conflict.  Equality  is  equity  ;  and  the  question  was  how  to 
frame  a  bounty  bill  that  would  place  all  the  soldiers  of  the  war  as 
nearly  on  a  common  level  as  possible.  It  was  no  easy  task  ;  and 
the  financial  situation  of  the  country  presented  a  serious  obstacle 
to  the  passage  of  any  bill  on  the  subject.  It  was,  however,  ear- 
nestly agitated  in  both  branches  of  Congress,  and  in  the  executive 
departments  of  the  government.  The  President  was  soon  found 
to  be  decidedly  hostile  to  any  measure  of  equalization.  He  did 
not  so  avow  himself,  but  his  acts  proved  it.  His  provost-marshal 
general,  as  a  sort  of  flank  movement,  made  an  official  estimate  of 
the  amount  required  for  the  purpose  of  equalization,  which,  I 
believe,  footed  up  from  six  to  seven  hundred  millions  of  dollars. 
The  pay  department  exhibited  similar  gifts  in  arithmetic,  though 
it  made  the  ao-oreo-ate  amount  required  some  two  hundred  millions 
less.  The  Treasury  Department  tried  its  hand  with  similar  re- 
sults, several  of  its  bureaus  furnishing  the  most  exaggerated  cal- 
culations of  the  amount  called  for  by  the  proposed  measure,  and 
Mr.  McCulloch  himself  being  especially  active  in  the  business  of 
dissuading  members  of  Congress  from  touching  so  dreadful  a  pro- 
ject.   The  effect  of  those  executive  demonstrations  was  soon  made 


388  IMPOLICY   OF  LAND   BOUNTIES. 

manifest.  Congress  admitted  that  justice  should  be  done  to  our 
soldiers,  but  it  was  felt  that  insuperable  financial  difficulties  were 
in  the  way;  and  the  result  was  the  birth  of  the  project  of  land 
bounties,  which  rapidly  began  to  take  shape,  and  threatened  to 
lure  into  its  support  a  decided  majority  of  both  Houses.  We  had,  it 
was  said,  over  one  thousand  millions  of  acres  of  public  lands,  and 
with  them  we  would  pay  off  the  soldiers  without  adding  to  the 
burdens  of  the  people.  I  saw  that  the  policy  would  be  utterly 
ruinous  to  the  country,  while  its  promised  justice  to  the  soldier 
would  prove  a  delusion.  It  was  almost  as  wanton  a  conspiracy 
against  the  Homestead  Law  and  the  productive  wealth  of  the  na- 
tion as  the  kindred  proposition  of  certain  prominent  politicians  in 
1863  to  mortgage  the  public  domain  to  our  creditors  in  security  for 
our  debt,  which  I  had  the  honor  to  expose  and  denounce  at  the 
time  on  this  floor.  Earnestly  entertaining  these  views,  I  was  glad 
to  find  an  early  opportunity  to  express  them  in  the  form  of  a  report 
from  the  House  Committee  on  the  Public  Lands,  in  response  to  a 
memorial  from  New  Hampshire  soldiers  praying  bounties  in  land. 
That  report,  which  was  laid  on  the  desks  of  members  and  con 
siderably  copied  into  the  newspapers,  showed  so  conclusively,  by 
unanswerable  facts  and  figures,  the  impolicy  and  iniquity  of  the 
proposition,  that  I  hope  I  shall  be  pardoned  for  saying  that  it 
very  materially  aided  in  its  defeat,  and  in  thus  saving  the  public 
domain  from  a  most  frightful  scheme  of  spoliation  and  plunder. 

The  way  was  thus  again  opened,  very  naturally,  for  the  con- 
sideration of  bounties  in  money,  and  the  subject  was  examined 
more  earnestly  than  before.  Calculations  were  made,  which  I 
believe  were  reliable,  showing  that  about  one  hundred  and  fifty 
millions  of  dollars  would  be  sufficient  to  pay  and  equalize  boun- 
ties on  the  basis  of  eight  and  one  third  dollars  per  month  for  the 
time  of  service  ;  and  after  freely  conferring  with  intelligent  sol- 
diers and  sailors  on  the  subject  I  reported  to  the  House  a  bill 
framed  upon  that  basis,  which  was  referred  to  the  Committee  on 
Military  Affairs.  General  Schenck  reported  it  back,  with  sundry 
modifications  as  to  details,  and  it  passed  the  House  by  an  over- 
whelming vote.  In  the  Senate,  however,  it  encountered  serious 
opposition.  The  executive  agencies  to  which  I  have  referred 
seemed  to  be  far  more  potent  in  that  body  than  in  the  House. 
The  financial  difficulty  was  regarded  as  insurmountable.  Be- 
sides, many  Senators  declared  that  the  soldier,  having  received 
what  he  contracted  to  fight  for,  was  entitled  to  nothing  more. 
These  Senators,  however,  were  quite  anxious  for  the  passage  of  a 


IMPOLICY   OF  LAND   BOUNTIES.  389 

Jbill  to  increase  their  own  salaries  $2,000  a  year,  which  the  House 
refused  to  agree  to,  for  the  reason,  in  part  at  least,  that  the  Senate 
refused  to  concur  in  the  Bounty  Bill.  The  final  result  of  this  con- 
flict was  a  compromise,  by  which  the  measure  now  known  as  the 
Act  of  July  28,  1866,  was  indissolubly  married  to  the  proposi- 
tion to  increase  the  pay  of  members  ;  and,  under  the  motive  power 
of  an  argument  two  thousand  dollars  strong,  this  cunnin^  but  dis- 
creditable project  was  carried.  I  am  very  glad  that  it  had  a  Demo- 
cratic parentage,  and  that  a  large  wing  of  the  Republicans  in  Con- 
gress opposed  it  from  the  beginning  to  the  end.  The  Bounty 
Bill  thus  carried  through  was  an  insult  to  the  very  principle  of 
equalization  ;  and  though  it  takes  from  the  treasury  nearly  sixty 
millions  of  money,  it  has  proved  almost  as  unsatisfactory  to  our 
soldiers  as  if  no  bill  at  all  had  been  enacted. 

The  agitation  of  the  subject,  however,  now  gradually  subsided. 
What  had  been  done  for  the  soldier,  though  it  disappointed  him, 
seemed  to  create  a  new  obstacle  in  the  way  of  doing  more.  The 
financial  condition  of  the  country  did  not  improve,  and  although 
the  House  reenacted  General  Schenck's  bill  during  the  last  ses- 
sion of  the  Thirty-ninth  Congress,  it  failed  in  the  Senate,  as  was 
naturally  to  be  expected.  Thus  the  matter  rested,  Mr.  Chairman, 
till  the  early  part  of  the  present  session,  when  a  bill  was  intro- 
duced and  referred  to  the  Committee  on  the  Public  Lands  pro- 
viding for  very  lame  bounties  in  lands.  The  asgre^ate  number 
to  whom  it  promised  bounty  was  two  millions  two  hundred  and 
forty-five  thousand  six  hundred  and  fifty-nine,  and  it  called  for 
three  hundred  and  thirty-four  millions  nine  hundred  and  seventy 
thousand  three  hundred  and  sixty  acres  of  land,  for  which  war- 
rants were  to  be  issued  and  made  assignable  like  those  of  our 
Mexican  War.  My  facts  are  official,  being  based  on  the  careful 
calculations  of  the  War  Department.  The  effect  of  throwing  upon 
the  market  this  immense  issue  of  warrants  would  necessarily  bring 
down  their  price  so  low  that  it  would  prove  a  pitiful  mockery  of 
the  just  claim  of  the  soldier,  while  speculators  would  buy  them  up 
in  vast  quantities,  and  make  them  the  basis  of  new  and  most  fear- 
ful monopolies  of  the  public  domain.  These  and  kindred  facts 
were  forcibly  set  forth  by  the  committee  in  an  adverse  report, 
accompanied  by  a  bill  which  they  offered  as  a  substitute,  and  which 
has  passed  the  House,  by  which  the  five-dollar  and  ten-dollar  fees 
required  under  the  Homestead  Law  shall  be  remitted  in  the  case  of 
honorably  discharged  soldiers  and  seamen,  while  the  existing  con- 
ditions of  settlement  and  improvement  are  adhered  to. 


390  IMPOLICY   OF   LAND   BOUNTIES. 

Mr.  Chairman,  another  land  bounty  bill  has  been  reported  to 
the  House  and  referred  to  the  Committee  on  Military  Affairs,  and 
a  majority  of  that  committee,  as  I  understand,  have  agreed  to  rec- 
ommend its  passage.  Should  it  be  reported  at  this  late  hour  in 
the  session  no  opportunity  can  be  given  for  debate ;  and  I  there- 
fore avail  myself  of  the  present  occasion  to  discuss  its  provisions, 
and  to  protest  against  its  enactment.  It  attempts  to  escape  some 
of  the  difficulties  already  pointed  out  respecting  land  bounties,  by 
providing  that,  instead  of  assignable  land  warrants,  there  shall  be 
issued  to  the  soldier  a  certificate  of  indebtedness  for  the  amount  of 
his  bounty,  computed  at  the  rate  of  eight  and  one  third  dollars  per 
month  for  his  time  of  service,  and  drawing  six  per  cent,  interest, 
which  certificate  shall  be  used  only  by  him  or  his  heirs,  and  be 
payable  only  in  land.  This,  in  effect,  though  in  other  words,  is  the 
same  thing  as  so  many  non-assignable  land  warrants.  These  cer- . 
tificates,  as  I  shall  presently  show,  would  certainly  be  made  assign- 
able by  Congress  at  an  early  day ;  but  for  the  sake  of  the  argu- 
ment I  will  admit  that  their  non-assignable  character  is  preserved, 
and  that  such  is  the  bona  fide  purpose  of  the  bill.  It  must  follow, 
then,  most  conclusively,  that  its  aim  is  not  to  give  land  to  those 
who  really  need  it  for  cultivation.  The  fraction  of  our  soldiers 
who  are  farmers,  and  actually  want  homes  on  the  public  domain, 
can  have  them  now,  under  the  Homestead  Law ;  and  under  the 
House  bill  before  referred  to,  which  will  doubtless  pass  the  Senate, 
the  soldiers  can  have  a  home  on  the  lands  of  the  government 
without  money  and  without  price.  Probably  a  small  portion  only 
of  our  soldiers  and  seamen  desire  to  go  West  and  settle  on  the 
public  domain  ;  but  those  of  them  who  do  would  seek  title  under 
the  Homestead  Law,  since  a  gift  of  land  under  that  would  be  just 
as  good  as  a  gift  under  a  law  providing  the  same  thing  under  the 
name  of  bounty,  while  the  certificates  of  indebtedness  would  of 
course  be  used  in  the  purchase  of  other  and  additional  lands,  to  be 
held  for  some  indefinite  time  for  a  rise  in  the  price.  Who  does  not 
see  that  this  would  be  the  exact  operation  of  this  measure  ?  The 
lands  taken  under  it  would  be  withheld  from  settlement  and  tillage, 
for  the  palpable  reason  that  no  man  would  buy  them  when  just 
such  lands  could  be  had  free  of  cost.  To  argue  otherwise  is  first- 
rate  nonsense.  The  quantity  of  land  which  would  thus  be  locked 
up  from  the  landless  and  laboring  poor  of  the  country  is  given  in 
the  following  official  letter  from  Secretary  Stanton,  in  April  last, 
in  answer  to  an  inquiry  addressed  to  him  by  myself:  — 

"  In  compliance  with  the  request  of  the  Chairman  of  the  Committee  on  the 


IMPOLICY   OF   LAND   BOUNTIES.  391 

Public  Lands  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  for  a  statement  of  the  amount 
of  public  land  necessary  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the  proposed  bill,  (H.  R. 
No.  940,)  '  to  equalize  the  bounties  of  soldiers,  sailors,  and  marines  who  served 
in  the  late  war  for  the  Union.'  In  the  event  of  its  becoming  a  law,  I  have  the 
honor  to  communicate  a  report  on  the  subject  by  the  Paymaster-general  of  the 
Army,  dated  the  2d  instant,  as  follows  : 

"  In  a  communication  from  this  office  to  the  Secretary  of  War,  and  dated 
March  31,  1866,  will  be  found  a  carefully  prepared  estimate  of  the  amount  of 
money  required  to  pay  the  bounties  under  a  bill  then  pending  in  the  Senate 
introduced  by  the  Chairman  of  the  Military  Committee. 

"  That  bill  was  substantially  the  same  in  its  terms  as  this  House  Bill  No.  940, 
except  as  to  the  manner  of  making  payment. 

"The  sum  estimated  was  $253,691,100. 

"In  my  letter  of  August  6,  1866,  addressed  to  General  Vincent,  assistant 
adjutant-general,  will  be  found  another  carefully  prepared  estimate,  showing 
the  amount  required  to  pay  the  additional  bounties  provided  by  the  law  of  July 
28,  1866. 

"  The  sum  estimated  was  $58,634,300. 

"  Experience  so  far  gives  indication  that  this  last  estimate  is  rather  short 
than  in  excess  of  the  exact  truth. 

"  Deducting  this  cost  of  the  additional  bounties  from  the  amount  of  the  first 
estimate  for  equalization  of  bounties,  the  remainder  gives  a  pretty  close  approx- 
imate estimate  of  the  further  amount  that  would  be  required  under  the  bill  in 
question,  namely,  $195,056,800,  which,  in  land  at  $1.25  per  acre,  will  require 
one  hunched  and  fifty-six  millions  forty-five  thousand  four  hundred  and  forty 
acres.  No  note  is  taken  herein  of  the  local  bounties  not  paid  by  the  United 
States,  for  I  have  no  means  of  ascertaining  their  amount." 

The  local  bounties  referred  to,  could  they  ever  be  ascertained, 
would  somewhat  reduce  this  estimate,  but  the  aggregate  amount 
may  safely  be  set  down  as  not  falling  very  much  below  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  millions  of  acres.  This  immense  area,  enough  for 
an  empire,  being  equal  in  extent  to  the  thirteen  original  colonies, 
save  North  Carolina  and  Pennsylvania,  double  the  area  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland,  and  nearly  nineteen  millions  of  acres  larger 
than  the  French  empire,  and  consisting,  of  course,  of  picked  arable  . 
land,  is  to  be  withheld  from  cultivation  and  productive  wealth  in 
order  that  the  soldier,  who  needs  his  bounty  now  in  money,  may  at 
some  future  time  get  it  in  the  price  of  his  land,  which  is  kept  idle 
at  the  nation's  expense  and  to  the  cruel  wrong  of  multitudes  who 
long  for  homes.  We  convert  him  into  a  land-jobber,  and  conspire 
with  him  against  the  productive  industry  of  the  country.  We  set 
aside  the  Homestead  Law  as  to  more  than  one  fourth  of  the  tillable 
portion  of  the  public  domain  by  excluding  from  it  the  poor  who 
would  coin  their  labor  into  national  wealth,  extend  the  borders  of 
our  civilization,  and  realize  the  blessings  of  independence.  It  is 
said,  I  know,  that  we  are  not  able  to  pay  the  soldier  his  bounty  in 


392  IMPOLICY   OF  LAND  BOUNTIES. 

money,  and  that  we  have  nothing  but  land  with  which  to  satisfy 
him.  This  I  deny.  The  nation  is  able  to  do  justice  to  its  heroic 
defenders,  and  cannot  honorably  plead  poverty  as  an  excuse.  But 
if  that  plea  is  to  be  accepted,  then  I  reply  that  we  are  still 
less  able  to  dedicate  to  solitude  from  one  hundred  to  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  millions  of  acres  of  land  which  else  might  be  carved 
up  into  small  homesteads,  to  be  tilled  by  their  owners  and  made 
the  basis  of  revenue  and  national  wealth.  The  country,  with 
all  its  great  resources,  is  too  poor  thus  to  cut  off  its  supplies  by 
wholesale  prostitution  of  its  means  and  its  opportunities,  and 
could  far  better  afford  to  pay  the  soldier  a  reasonable  bounty  in 
money.  Not  one  acre  of  land  which  any  poor  man  needs  for 
cultivation  should  be  denied  him  in  the  interest  of  those  who 
would  grasp  it  for  mere  speculation. 

A  member  of  this  House  from  Illinois  informs  me  that  in  the 
western  border  of  that  State,  George  Peabody,  years  ago,  pur- 
chased thousands  of  acres  of  wild  lands  which  he  holds  to-day. 
Settlers  have  established  themselves  around  these  lands,  built  their 
houses,  planted  their  orchards,  and  created  wealth.  The  grain 
and  other  products  of  their  farms  which  are  annually  shipped  to 
market  on  the  railways  made  necessary  by  the  settlement  of  the 
country,  go  to  make  up  the  sum  of  our  national  wealth.  These 
settlers  are  every  day  adding  to  the  value  of  Mr.  Peabody's  lands, 
while  other  settlers,  who  would  long  since  have  made  them  pro- 
ductive, have  been  driven  further  West  in  search  of  homes.  The 
government  thus  entered  into  partnership  with  Peabody  in  cheat- 
ing our  pioneer  producers  out  of  the  homes  to  which  they  were 
entitled  on  these  lands,  and  in  staying  the  industrial  development 
of  the  West  for  the  benefit  of  nobody  in  the  world  but  a  single 
monopolist,  whose  home  is  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  I  do 
not  brand  George  Peabody  as  a  robber,  for  he  is  known  as  an  hon- 
orable, patriotic,  and  liberal  man.  The  Government  of  the  United 
States  licensed  him  to  do  these  things,  as  it  has  licensed  other  land 
speculators,  and  has  been  itself  the  plunderer  of  its  citizens  and  the 
practical  foe  of  national  progress.  But  these  evils  are  multiplied 
and  compounded  by  the  bill  I  am  now  discussing,  for  instead  of  a 
few  thousands  of  acres  it  grasps  many  millions,  and  although  the 
owners  are  multiplied  the  homeless  poor  of  the  country  are  equally 
excluded  from  this  immense  area  which  the  nation  pledged  to  them 
by  its  preemption  and  homestead  laws. 

Mr.  Chairman,  I  have  discussed  this  measure  on  the  supposition 
.that  the  bounty  it  proposes  is  to  go  to  the  soldier  only,  or  his  heirs, 


IMPOLICY   OF   LAND   BOUNTIES.  393 

and  that  the  certificates  of  indebtedness  are  never  to  he  made  as- 
signable. I  have  thus  given  the  proposition  its  best  possible  face, 
and  have  shown,  I  think,  the  utter  impolicy  if  not  viciousness  of 
the  project.  I  speak,  of  course,  of  the  measure  itself,  and  not  of 
the  motives  of  its  friends,  which  I  doubt  not  are  patriotic.  But  the 
truth  is,  that  should  it  become  a  law,  the  certificates  of  indebted- 
ness would  be  made  assignable.  On  this  subject  I  beg  leave  to 
quote  from  a  recent  letter  of  the  Commissioner  of  the  General 
Land  Office,  in  which  he  speaks  of  this  bill  in  the  light  of  actual 
facts.     He  says  :  — 

"  I  have  examined  the  inclosed  bill  (H.  R.  No.  940)  to  equalize  bounties  of 
soldiers,  sailors,  and  marines  who  served  in  the  late  war  for  the  Union,  which 
I  had  the  honor  to  receive  from  you  with  the  request  for  a  statement  as  to  the 
probable  effect  of  the  measure  in  the  light  of  the  experience  of  this  office. 

"  I  find  that  the  bill  provides  for  the  issue  to  soldiers,  sailors,  and  marines  of 
interest-bearing  certificates,  to  be  used  by  them  or  their  heirs,  in  payment  for 
public  land  which  they  may  hereafter  purchase  from  the  government ;  that 
such  certificates  are  in  no  wise  transferable,  and  that  the  interest  may  continue 
to  accrue  without  limitation  until  the  recipient  may  see  fit  to  purchase  land 
therewith. 

"  The  Act  of  September  28,  1850,  granting  bounty  lands  to  soldiers  who  had 
served  in  any  of  the  wars  in  which  the  United  States  had  been  engaged,  con- 
tained a  provision  that  the  warrants  thereby  authorized  to  be  issued  should 
be  located  by  the  soldier  or  his  heirs,  thus  preventing  their  assignment  and 
sale.  This  provision  gave  such  general  dissatisfaction  that  Congress  passed 
the  Act  of  March  22,  1852,  authorizing  the  transfer  of  any  warrant  then  issued 
or  to  be  issued. 

"  The  files  and  records  of  this  office  show  that  not  one  in  five  hundred  of  the 
land  warrants,  issued  and  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  soldiers  or  their  heirs, 
have  been  located  by  them,  or  for  their  use  and  benefit ;  and  further,  that 
although  the  said  Act  of  March  22,  1852,  made  such  warrants  assignable,  it  is 
safe  to  assume  that  not  to  exceed  ten  per  cent,  of  them  have  been  used  by  pre- 
emptors  as  assignees  in  payment  for  actual  settlements,  the  most  part  having 
been  used  by  persons  to  acquire  title  to  the  public  lands  for  speculative  pur- 
poses. 

"  Should  the  bill  under  consideration  become  a  law,  and  by  future  legislation 
be  so  modified  as  to  make  the  certificates  assignable  or  available  to  the  soldier 
or  his  heirs,  without  becoming  settlers  on  the  public  lands,  there  is  no  reason 
that  can  be  suggested  by  this  office  why  results  like  those  in  respect  to  the  past 
issues  may  not  be  looked  for  in  regard  to  the  certificates  contemplated  by  the 
present  measure,  the  effect  of  which  would  be  to  transfer  to  non-resident  pro- 
prietors large  bodies  of  the  public  domain." 

That,  sir,  is  the  authoritative  statement  of  Commissioner  Wilson, 
whose  judgment,  experience,  and  familiarity  with  the  whole  sub- 
ject no  one  will  question.  That  these  certificates  would  be  made 
assignable  there  can  scarcely  be  a  single  doubt.     The  great  body 


394  IMPOLICY   OF  LAND  BOUNTIES. 

of  our  soldiers  need  their  bounty  now,  and  not  the  promise  of  it 
at  some  time  in  the  uncertain  future  ;  and  if  the  relative  handful 
of  the  soldiers  of  our  Mexican  War  were  strong  enough  to  carry  a 
bill  through  Congress  making  their  warrants  assignable,  it  is  quite 
certain  the  like  thing  would  happen  now  at  the  bidding  of  the  hosts 
who  would  demand  it.  Indeed,  I  believe  some  of  the  friends  of  the 
bill  do  not  disguise  the  fact  that  ultimately  these  certificates  are  to 
become  assignable  by  law,  so  that  the  holders  of  them  may  realize 
their  value  in  money. 

What,  then,  would  be  the  effect  of  such  legislation,  both  as  to 
the  soldier  and  the  public  domain  ?  Mr.  Wilson,  in  the  letter  I 
have  quoted,  says  that  not  one  in  five  hundred  of  the  Mexican 
War  land  warrants  were  located  by  the  soldiers  or  for  their  use  and 
benefit,  and  that  not  to  exceed  ten  per  cent,  of  them  have  been 
used  by  preemptors  as  assignees  in  payment  for  actual  settlements, 
the  most  part  having  been  used  by  persons  to  acquire  title  to  the 
public  lands  for  speculative  purposes.  He  predicts  very  naturally 
the  same  mischievous  results  from  the  present  bill  should  it  be- 
come a  law.  But  I  ask  particular  attention  to  the  following  ad- 
ditional facts  which  I  copy  from  the  carefully  prepared  report  of 
the  House  Committee  on  Public  Lands  already  referred  to :  — 

"  At  the  close  of  the  last  fiscal  year  there  remained  outstanding  fifty-three 
thousand  nine  hundred  and  twelve  military  bounty  land  warrants,  issued  under 
various  acts  of  Congress,  calling  for  the  aggregate  quantity  of  five  million  six 
hundred  and  three  thousand  two  hundred  and  twenty  acres.  These  warrants 
are  selling  at  about  one  dollar  per  acre.  Under  the  Agricultural  College  Act 
of  1862  scrip  has  been  issued  to  non-public  land-holding  States  to  the  amount 
of  five  million  three  hundred  and  forty  acres  ;  and  when  the  States  of  the 
South  shall  have  received  their  shares  under  the  act,  the  whole  amount  of  land 
covered  by  it  will  be  nine  million  six  hundred  thousand  acres.  This  will  be 
the  subject  of  monopoly  in  the  hands  of  speculators,  and  the  price  of  the  scrip 
will  depend,  to  a  considerable  extent,  upon  the  quantity  of  it  in  the  market 
and  of  the  unlocated  military  bounty  land  warrants.  The  price  has  generally 
ranged  from  sixty  to  seventy  cents  per  acre,  but  has  sometimes  gone  much 
lower.  As  further  affecting  the  price  of  warrants  and  scrip  it  should  be  re- 
membered that  over  forty-three  million  acres  of  "  swamp  and  overflowed 
lands  "  have  been  granted  by  Congress  to  the  States,  more  than  one  half  of 
which  is  probably  in  the  hands  of  monopolists  ;  that  about  two  hundred  mill- 
ions of  acres  have  been  granted  to  aid  in  building  railroads  and  for  other  pur- 
poses of  internal  improvements,  thus  inaugurating  further  and  fearful  monop- 
olies of  the  public  domain  ;  and  that  millions  of  acres  of  Indian  lands,  by 
virtue  of  the  most  pernicious  treaty  stipulations,  are  falling  into  the  hands  of 
monopolists,  thus  still  further  aggravating  the  wide-spread  evils  long  since 
inflicted  upon  the  country  by  the  ruinous  policy  of  land  speculation.  Every 
day  gives  birth  to  some  new  scheme  of  monopoly  by  which  the  paramount 


IMPOLICY   OF   LAND   BOUNTIES.  395 

right  of  the  people  to  homes  on  the  public  domain  is  abridged  or  denied,  and 
its  productive  wealth  seriously  retarded;  and  no  one  will  need  be  told  that, 
should  this  policy  be  continued,  the  opportunities  of  settlement  and  tillage 
under  the  preemption  and  homestead  laws  must  constantly  diminish." 

Mr.  Chairman,  I  ask  gentlemen  to  keep  these  facts  in  remem- 
brance in  considering  the  effect  of  this  measure  upon  the  soldier. 
I  ask  them  to  remember  the  present  price  of  college  scrip,  the 
quantity  of  which  is  yet  to  be  almost  doubled,  and  which  at  one 
time  sold  as  low  as  thirty-seven  and  a  half  cents  per  acre.  Let 
them  bear  in  mind  the  amount  of  old  bounty  land  warrants  yet 
outstanding,  and  the  stupendous  monopoly  of  the  public  domain 
which  is  going  on  in  other  directions  and  threatening  to  swallow 
it  up,  and  then  ask  themselves  what  would  be  the  effect  of  putting 
in  the  market  from  one  to  two  millions  of  assignable  certificates 
payable  in  land.  Every  man  can  answer  this  question  for  himself, 
but  I  believe  I  am  safe  in  sajnng  that  the  price  would  fall  as  low  as 
twenty-five  cents  per  acre.  Our  Mexican  land  warrants  at  one  time 
sold  at  from  thirty-five  to  forty  cents  per  acre,  and  this,  it  must  be 
remembered,  was  before  the  enactment  of  the  Homestead  Law, 
while  the  quantity  of  warrants  was  a  small  fraction  only  of  that  of 
the  certificates  now  proposed  to  be  issued.  The  "  Great  Repub- 
lic," in  speaking  of  this  bill,  says  that  "  after  paying  notary  and 
attorney's  fees  the  whole  money  value  to  the  soldiers  of  such  a 
grant  would  not  exceed  twenty  million  dollars,  and  it  would  be  a 
lmndred  times  better  for  the  country  to  make  this  payment  in 
money,  and  thus  leave  the  public  domain  to  the  laboring  masses. 
The  veil  thrown  over  this  hideous  speculation  is  too  thin  to  cheat 
the  soldiers  or  citizens  of  the  country.  It  should  be  stopped  where 
it  is.  If  further  bounty  is  to  be  paid,  let  it  be  honestly  paid  in 
money,  and  thus  close  the  door  against  further  speculations  in 
what  is  designed  for,  and  should  be  reserved  as,  the  homes  of  the 
industrious  millions." 

This  is  from  the  pen  of  Judge  Edmonds,  late  Commissioner  of 
the  General  Land  Office,  and  one  of  the  truest  and  most  sagacious 
of  our  public  men  ;  and  it  appears  in  the  columns  of  a  well-con- 
ducted and  influential  journal,  which  I  understand  to  be  one  of 
the  principal  organs  of  the  loyal  soldiers  and  sailors  of  the  United 
States.  He  adds,  that  "  the  soldiers  have  asked  for  no  such  meas- 
ure, nor  do  they  want  to  be  made  the  objects  of  any  such  fictitious 
gratitude,"  and  declares  that  "  the  obligations  of  the  country  to 
them  would  be  nearly  canceled,  should  they  knowingly  and  pur- 
posely allow  so  monstrous  a  scheme  of  monopoly  against  the 
laborino-  men  of  the  country  to  be  perpetrated  in  their  name." 


396  IMPOLICY  OF  LAND  BOUNTIES. 

But  while  the  bill  would  thus  prove  a  violated  promise  to  the 
soldier,  its  effect  upon  the  public  domain  would  be  still  more  de- 
plorable. On  this  point  I  take  leave  to  quote  again  from  the  same 
Report :  — 

"  All  the  evils  of  land  speculation,  to  an  extent  as  alarming  as  it  would  be 
unprecedented,  would  be  the  sure  result.  Capital,  always  sensitive  and 
sagacious,  would  grasp  these  warrants  at  the  lowest  rates.  Land  monopoly 
in  the  United  States,  under  this  national  sanction,  would  have  its  "new  birth, 
and  enter  upon  a  career  of  wide-spread  mischief  and  desolation.  Speculators 
would  seize  and  appropriate  nearly  all  the  choice  lands  of  the  government, 
and  those  nearest  the  settled  portions  of  the  country,  while  homestead  claim- 
ants and  preemptors  would  be  driven  to  the  outskirts  of  civilization,  meeting 
all  the  increased  expense  and  danger  of  securing  homes  for  their  families,  and 
surrendering  the  local  advantages  of  schools,  churches,  mills,  wagon-roads,  and 
whatever  else  pertains  to  the  necessities  and  enjoyments  of  a  well-settled  neigh- 
borhood. This  policy  would  stop  the  advancing  column  of  immigration  from 
Europe,  and  of  emigration  from  the  States,  which  has  done  so  much  to  make 
the  public  domain  a  source  of  productive  wealth,  a  subject  of  revenue,  and  a 
home  for  the  landless  thousands  who  have  thus  at  once  become  useful  citizens 
and  an  element  of  national  strength.  It  would,  in  fact,  amount  to  a  virtual 
overthrow  of  the  beneficent  policy  of  the  Homestead  Law,  which  has,  perhaps, 
done  more  to  make  the  American  name  honored  and  loved  among  the  Chris- 
tian nations  of  the  earth  than  any  single  enactment  since  the  formation  of  the 
government." 

Mr.  Chairman,  I  submit  that  the  facts  embodied  in  this  brief 
summary  ought  to  settle  this  question  in  the  minds  of  all  men  who 
will  lay  aside  passion  and  allow  themselves  for  a  single  moment  to 
think.  With  me  they  are  absolutely  conclusive.  I  claim  to  be 
as  true  a  friend  of  the  soldier  as  any  man  in  this  Congress  or  out 
of  it ;  but  I  am  likewise  the  friend  of  the  millions  who  toil, 
whether  soldiers  or  civilians,  and  cannot,  therefore,  unite  with  any 
man  or  set  of  men,  for  any  purpose,  in  opposing  the  Homestead 
Law,  either  by  open  assault  or  the  insidious  policy  of  indirection. 
I  am  quite  as  unwilling  to  aid  in  its  overthrow  now,  on  the  pre- 
tense of  giving  bounties  to  soldiers,  as  I  was  five  years  ago  on  the 
specious  ground  of  paying  our  national  debt.  Its  policy  is  con- 
stantly invaded  by  stupendous  grants  to  railroad  corporations,  by 
corrupt  Indian  treaties  which  sweep  away  the  rights  of  settlers 
and  curse  vast  districts  of  country,  and  by  the  growing  spirit  of 
monopoly,  shown  in  multiplied  forms,  and  threatening  the  very 
principle  of  democratic  equality  in  the  Republic.  Sir,  the  duty  to 
which  we  are  summoned  is  not  that  of  submission  or  acquiescence, 
but  of  unflinching  resistance  to  these  unchristian  and  anti-repub- 
lican tendencies  of  our  time.    No  ephemeral  advantages,  if  they 


IMPOLICY   OF   LAND   BOUNTIES.  397 

were  attainable  by  an  opposite  course,  could  atone  for  the  endur- 
ing mischiefs  to  the  country  which  would  certainly  ensue. 

Mr.  Chairman,  if  any  further  argument  addressed  to  this  House 
is  needed,  I  find  it  at  hand.  This  body,  in  March  last,  passed 
without  a  division  the  following  resolution  :  — 

"  Resolved,  That  in  order  to  carry  into  full  and  complete  effect  the  spirit 
and  policy  of  the  preemption  and  homestead  laws  of  the  United  States  the 
further  sale  of  the  agricultural  public  lands  ought  to  be  prohibited  by  law  ;  and 
that  all  proposed  grants  of  land  to  aid  in  the  construction  of  railroads,  or  for 
other  special  objects,  should  be  carefully  scrutinized  and  rigidly  subordinated  to 
the  paramount  purpose  of  securing  homes  for  the  landless  poor,  the  actual  settle- 
ment and  tillage  of  the  public  domain,  and  the  consequent  increase  of  the  national 
wealth." 

Sir,  I  am  quite  sure  the  sentiment  of  this  resolution  would  be 
most  heartily  indorsed  by  the  great  body  of  the  people  of  the 
United  States.  Let  us  stand  by  it  in  the  face  of  all  temptations. 
It  utters  the  true  watchword  and  rallying  cry  of  the  people  of  all 
parties,  and  its  gospel  must  be  preached  and  practiced  if  our  great 
national  patrimony  is  to  be  saved  from  the  greed  of  monopolists 
and  the  rapacity  of  thieves.  I  do  not  believe  this  House  will  now 
go  back  on  the  record  it  has  made.  Indeed,  some  of  the  friends 
of  this  bounty  bill  assure  me  that  they  desire  its  passage  because 
they  believe  Congress  will  soon  carry  into  effect  the  resolution  I 
have  quoted  by  providing  that  no  more  of  our  public  lands  shall 
be  sold  except  under  the  preemption  and  homestead  laws,  the  ef- 
fect of  which,  they  say,  would  be  to  bring  these  certificates  of  in- 
debtedness nearly  to  par.  I  sincerely  hope  Congress  will  be  wise 
enough  to  do  what  is  predicted.  I  even  hope  for  it  at  this  session ; 
but  I  deny  that  any  such  effect  on  the  price  of  certificates  would 
result.  Such  a  measure  could  not  interfere  with  the  holders  of 
college  scrip,  nor  land  warrants,  nor  Indian  scrip,  through  which 
land  could  still  be  bought  without  the  condition  of  occupancy  and 
improvement ;  nor  could  it  undo  those  huge  land  monopolies  al- 
ready existing  under  our  Indian-treaty  policy  and  swamp-land  leg- 
islation, through  which  the  trade  in  land  will  be  lively  for  a  good 
while  to  come.  There  will  be  ways  enough  left  to  buy  land  with- 
out the  obligation  to  live  upon  and  cultivate  it  after  the  bill  I  re- 
ported to  this.  House  some  months  ago  to  prohibit  further  land 
speculation  shall  have  become  a  law.  In  no  event  would  the 
price  of  these  certificates  give  the  soldier  the  bounty  he  is  entitled 
to  ask  ;  but  if  it  would,  the  injury  which  this  policy  would  inflict 
upon  the  country,  as  I  have  already  shown,  utterly  forbids  iis 


398  IMPOLICY   OF  LAND  BOUNTIES. 

adoption.  The  soldier,  if  he  understands  this,  will  not  ask  it,  and 
the  nation  has  no  right  to  entail  upon  itself  a  great  and  irreparable 
wrong  in  order  to  prevent  a  minor  one,  which  it  may  remedy  in 
another  way,  if  any  present  remedy  is  indispensable.  The  best 
friend  of  the  nation's  patriotic  defenders  is  the  friend  of  justice  and 
the  public  welfare  ;  and  the  men  who  were  unselfish  enough  to 
offer  their  lives  as  a  sacrifice  for  these  will  never  ask  the  represen- 
tatives of  the  people  to  trample  them  under  foot. 


THE  SEYMOUR  DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  PUBLIC 

LANDS. 

DELIVERED  AT  SHELBYVILLE,  AUGUST  8,  1868. 

[The  Democratic  National  Convention  which  nominated  Horatio  Seymour  for  the 
Presidency,  embodied  in  its  platform  the  remarkable  resolution  which  provoked  this 
carefully  prepared  review  of  the  course  of  political  parties  on  the  Land  Question. 
The  historical  facts  here  collected  can  lose  none  of  their  interest  in  the  coming  strife 
of  parties,  in  view  of  the  absorbing  interest  in  the  Land  Question  which  the  policy  of 
the  government  has  evoked.] 

I  begin  what  I  have  to  say  to-day  with  the  remark  that  our 
party  platforms  are  very  instructive  memorials  of  the  past.  This 
is  their  chief  value.  They  mark  the  shifting  and  ever  varying 
phases  of  American  politics,  and  often  bear  witness  to  the  way- 
wardness or  positive  infidelity  of  our  public  men.  This  is  forcibly 
illustrated  in  the  National  Democratic  Platform  recently  adopted  in 
the  city  of  New  York.  I  take  it  for  granted  that  the  essential 
truth  in  politics,  as  the  builders  of  the  platform  understood  it,  the 
substance  and  not  the  shadow  of  Democracy,  is  here  embodied. 
Every  Democrat  in  the  United  States  now  subscribes  to  this  latest 
and  most  authoritative  confession  of  national  political  faith.  And 
yet,  if  we  are  to  try  this  document  by  the  ancient  tests  of  Demo- 
cratic orthodoxy,  we  shall  find  it  a  new  and  weak  invention  which 
the  fathers  of  Democracy  would  disown.  This  will  be  found  true, 
whether  we  consider  the  platform  in  its  negative  or  its  positive 
character.  For  example,  the  Democratic  principle  of  the  right  of 
secession,  which  has  long  been  a  fundamental  article  of  faith,  is 
unconditionally  abandoned.  It  has  been  "settled  for  all  time  to 
come  by  the  war,"  and  is  "  never  to  be  renewed,  or  reagitated; " 
but  how  an  unconstitutional  war  could  destroy  the  constitutional 
right  to  secede,  and  sweep  into  oblivion  the  everlasting  gospel  of 
the  resolutions  of  1798,  the  assembled  wisdom  at  New  York  failed 
to  explain.  The  divine  institution  of  slavery,  which  was  sacredly 
guarded  also  by  the  Constitution,  is  likewise  abandoned  forever. 
The  war,  which  four  years  ago  was  branded  as  a  "  failure,"  has  set- 
tled it  "  for  all  time  to  come,"  and  handed  it  down  to  a  common 
grave  with  its  "  twin  relic,"  the  right  of  secession ;  but  I  submit 


400     SEYMOUR  DEMOCRACY  AND   THE   PUBLIC   LANDS. 

that  if  both  the  war  and  the  proclamation  of  emancipation  were 
unconstitutional,  the  logic  of  pure  and  "  unterrified''  Democracy 
should  have  demanded  compensation  for  the  slaves  thus  wan- 
tonly set  free. 

Free  trade  was  another  time-honored  principle  of  Democracy. 
It  is  not,  however,  even  mentioned  in  the  New  York  Platform,  nor 
is  the  policy  of  protection  condemned.  On  the  contrary,  the  plat- 
form has  a  strong  savor  of  the  old  Whig  doctrine  of  a  tariff  for  rev- 
enue, with  incidental  protection  to  American  manufactures.  Dem- 
ocratic newspapers  and  politicians  have  not  been  sparing  of  their 
denunciations  of  the  high  tariff  policy  of  the  last  six  or  eight  years, 
but  these  denunciations  found  no  voice  in  the  New  York  Conven- 
tion. Hard  money  was  another  great  Democratic  principle.  Who 
does  not  remember  the  marshaling  of  the  Democratic  hosts  under 
Jackson  and  Benton  in  their  grand  battle  for  gold  and  silver,  and 
in  opposition  to  irredeemable  paper  issues  ?  And  who  would  have 
doubted  that  the  men  who  denounced  greenbacks  as  unconstitu- 
tional  during  the  war,  would  stand  by  the  old  hard  money  flag 
after  the  war  had  ended?  But  here,  again,  the  war  has  not  been 
a  "  failure."  Of  all  earthly  blessings,  greenbacks,  and  in  marvel- 
ous abundance,  are  now  most  to  be  coveted  Mn  the  judgment  of 
Democrats,  while  gold  and  silver  should  be  retired  from  sight  or 
use  as  far  as  possible.  Kindred  observations  apply  to  the  ancient 
Democratic  dogma  of  "  a  white  man's  government."  No  one  could 
have  supposed  it  possible  for  the  Democratic  party  to  live,  without 
teaching  constantly,  as  a  most  vital  truth,  the  inferiority  of  the 
negro,  and  the  danger  of  political  and  social  equality  with  him. 
But  the  New  York  Platform  utters  no  word  on  this  subject,  al- 
though negroes  now  actually  vote  and  may  hold  office  in  all  the 
States  lately  in  rebellion.  This  most  shameless  and  high-handed 
recreancy  to  saving  Democratic  ideas  and  traditions  has  surprised 
the  whole  country,  and  can  only  be  accounted  for  "  by  the  war, 
or  the  voluntary  action  of  the  Southern  States  in  Constitutional 
Convention  assembled." 

If  we  turn  from  the  negative  to  the  positive  side  of  the  New 
York  Platform,  we  shall  find  quite  as  little  relief  for  our  Democratic 
friends.  They  demand  the  "  immediate  restoration  of  all  the  States 
to  their  rights  in  the  Union,"  but  fail  to  tell  us  what  they  mean  by 
this  demand,  and  why  the  Democrats  in  both  Houses  of  Congress 
unitedly  vote  against  restoring  the  rebel  States  to  their  rights,  save 
those  of  secession  and  slavery,  which  have  confessedly  perished  by 
the  war.     They  demand  "  amnesty  for  all  past  political  offenses," 


SEYMOUR  DEMOCRACY  AND   THE  PUBLIC   LANDS.     401 

when  nobody  has  been  punished,  or  stands  the  least  chance  of 
being  punished,  for  any  such  offenses.  They  demand  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  Freedmen's  Bureau,  which  will  expire  by  law  on  the 
first  of  next  January,  and  which  law  was  opposed  by  the  Demo- 
crats of  both  Houses.  They  condemn  the  doctrine  of  immutable 
allegiance,  as  to  which  no  man  or,  party  in  the  country  takes  any 
issue  with  them.  They  assert  the  right  of  the  States  to  regulate 
the  question  of  suffrage,  which  is  expressly  admitted  by  the  Re- 
publican party ;  while  the  demand  for  a  "  reform  of  abuses  in  the 
administration,"  and  "  the  expulsion  of  corrupt  men  from  office," 
will  be  heartily  seconded  by  every  Republican  in  the  Union,  and, 
if  carried  out,  would  at  once  relieve  the  nation  from  the  infernal 
brood  of  Democratic  thieves  and  villains  who  are  preying  upon 
its  life,  from  Andrew  Johnson,  inclusive,  down  to  the  meanest 
political  scullions  and  prostitutes  that  have  found  favor  in  his 
sight. 

But  I  pass  from  these  general  matters.  They  are  exceedingly 
suggestive,  and  invite  a  more  extended  criticism,  but  I  dismiss  them, 
to-day  for  the  purpose  of  noticing,  with  some  degree  of  particular- 
ity and  emphasis,  a  still  more  remarkable  and  novel  feature  of  this 
very  remarkable  and  novel  platform.     It  is  as  follows  :  — 

"  That  the  public  lands  should  be  distributed  as  widely  as  pos- 
sible among  the  people,  and  should  be  disposed  of  either  under  the 
preemption  or  homestead  laws,  or  sold  in  reasonable  quantities,  and 
to  none  but  actual  occupants,  at  the  minimum  price  established  by 
the  government.  Where  grants  of  the  public  lands  may  be  deemed 
necessary  for  the  encouragement  of  important  public  improvements,, 
the  proceeds  of  the  sale  of  such  lands,  and  not  the  lands  themselves,, 
should  be  so  applied." 

This  is  most  excellent  Republican  doctrine.  From  my  earliest 
connection  with  politics  I  have  earnestly  contended  for  the  policy 
of  reserving  the  public  lands  for  actual  settlement  and  tillage.  For 
twenty  odd  years  I  have  publicly  advocated  the  homestead  princi- 
ple, and  the  Republican  party  now  stands  ready  to  advance  even 
beyond  this,  by  providing  that  the  further  sale  of  the  public  lands 
shall  cease,  except  as  provided  for  in  the  preemption  and  home- 
stead laws.  A  bill  embodying  this  provision  has  been  reported 
from  the  House  Committee  on  Public  Lands,  and  is  now  pending, 
while  its  principle  has  already  been  sanctioned  by  the  House,  in 
the  form  of  a  resolution  adopted  in  March  last,  which  further  pro- 
vided that  "  all  proposed  grants  of  land  to  aid  in  the  construction 
of  railroads,  or  for  other  special  objects,  should  be  carefully  scru- 

26 


402    SEYMOUR  DEMOCRACY  AND   THE   PUBLIC  LANDS. 

tinizecl  and  rigidly  subordinated  to  the  paramount  purpose  of  secur- 
ing homes  for  the  landless  poor,  the  settlement  and  tillage  of  the 
public  domain,  and  the  consequent  increase  of  the  national  wealth." 
In  pursuance  of  this  latter  provision  a  bill  has  passed  the  House 
regulating  all  future  land  grants  for  railroad  purposes,  and  declar- 
ing that  the  alternate  sections  granted  shall  be  sold  to  actual  set- 
tiers  only,  in  quantities  not  greater  than  one  hundred  and  sixty 
acres,  and  for  a  price  not  exceeding  two  dollars  and  fifty  cents  per 
acre,  thus  securing  the  settlement  of  the  country,  while  building 
the  road  with  "  the  proceeds  of  the  sale  of  such  lands,  and  not  the 
lands  themselves."  This  bill,  as  I  understand,  passed  the  Senate 
just  before  the  late  adjournment.  These  radical  and  saving  re- 
forms in  our  land  policy,  which  constitute  an  essential  part  of  the 
Republican  gospel  and  are  the  ripe  fruit  of  Republican  ascend- 
ency, are  stolen  and  appropriated  bodily  by  the  Copperhead  De- 
mocracy in  their  National  Convention.  By  far  the  best  plank  in 
their  platform  is  obtained  from  their  political  opponents  by  organ- 
ized thieving ;  and  with  a  knavery  perfectly  unchallenged,  an 
impudence  which  triumphs  over  all  adjectives,  and  an  audacity 
absolutely  transcendental,  they  ask  the  honest  masses  of  the  people 
for  their  support ! 

Gentlemen,  in  the  light  of  these  ugly  facts  I  trust  I  shall  be 
pardoned  if  I  uncover  the  political  nakedness  of  these  so-called 
Democrats,  and  pelt  them  a  little  while  with  the  excellent  timber 
which  they  have  sought  to  procure  from  us  by  theft.  It  may  do 
them  good,  and  also  serve  as  a  warning  to  others  against  the  use 
of  false  pretenses.  Since  actions  speak  louder  than  words,  let  me 
examine  the  Democratic  record  on  the  land  question.  I  believe 
it  is  Waldo  Emerson  who  says,  that  the  strength  of  a  sentence 
depends  upon  the  man  who  stands  behind  it.  If  mere  profes- 
sions could  make  men  saints,  the  millennium  would  long  since 
have  been  ushered  in.  I  do  not  deny  the  possibility  of  a  death- 
bed repentance,  or  an  instantaneous  conversion.  When  the  cup 
of  a  miserable  recreant  has  been  made  full  to  overflowing  a 
sudden  spasm  of  remorse  may  reveal  to  him  his  true  character,  and 
open  the  way  for  a  new  life.  Having  no  evidence  whatever  that 
any  such  mercy  has  visited  the  Democratic  conscience,  we  are 
compelled  to  judge  the  party  to-day  by  its  fruits.  What  are  these 
fruits  ? 

I  begin  with  what  is  called  our  land  grant  policy,  which,  in  brief, 
is  this  :  For  the  purpose  of  aiding  the  construction  of  a  proposed 
railroad  or  canal,  Congress  grants  the  alternate  odd  numbered  sec- 


SEYMOUR  DEMOCRACY  AND   THE   PUBLIC   LANDS.     403 

tions  along  the  line  of  the  work,  within  a  margin  of  six,  ten,  or 
twenty  miles  on  either  side  of  it ;  and  if  any  of  the  lands  within 
this  belt  shall  have  been  disposed  of  by  sale  or  otherwise,  the  de- 
ficiency shall  be  made  up  within  a  certain  specified  distance  beyond 
it.     The  lands  thus  granted  are  taken  charge  of  by  the  company 
which  undertakes  the  work,  and  become,  at  once,  a  complete  mo- 
nopoly.    No  time  is  fixed  within  which  the  lands  shall  be  sold  by 
the  company,  which  may  avail  itself  of  other  resources,  and  hold 
them  for  twenty  or  forty  years  for  a  rise  in  price.     Congress  made 
a  large  grant  of  lands  to  the  Illinois  Central  Railroad  eighteen  years 
ago,  and  a  considerable  portion  of  them  remains  unsold   to-day. 
Sales,  however,  occasionally  occur  at  from  thirty  to  forty  dollars 
per  acre,  there  being  no  fixed  price  beyond  which  the  company 
shall  not  go.     The  theory  of  this  policy  is,  that  the  government 
will  be  fully  compensated  for  the  odd  numbered  sections  granted 
by  the  enhanced  price  of  the  even  numbered  sections  which  are 
reserved ;  but  this  does  not  cure  the  vicious  principle  to  which  I 
refer.     The  lands  granted  are  still  a   ruinous   monopoly    in  the 
hands  of  the  company.     Besides,  the  principle  of  alternate  sections 
has  frequently  been  disregarded  by  Congress.    In  several  instances 
the  even  numbered  sections  have  been  granted,  after  the  odd  num- 
bered ones  had  been  exhausted.     I  believe  the  first  grant  of  lands 
ever  made  by  Congress,  in  alternate  sections,  for  any  work  of  in- 
ternal improvement,  was   in   1827,  to  aid  in  the  construction  of 
the  Wabash  and  Erie  Canal.     Two  additional  grants  were  sub- 
sequently made    for  this  work,  the  last   of  which  was  for  eight 
hundred  thousand  acres,  which  could  be  located  in  a  body  and 
selected  within   thirty  or  forty  miles  from  the  line  of  the  canal. 
Similar  abuses  of  our  land  grant  policy  have  been  sanctioned  by 
Congress,  in  aid  of  sundry  ship  canals  ;  but  the  policy  itself,  inde- 
pendent of  these  abuses,  is  indefensible  and  iniquitous.     It  blocks 
up  the  way  of  our  pioneers,  who  would  subdue  our  distant  borders 
and  open  the  pathway  for  organized  civil  communities.    It  hinders 
the  increase  of  national  wealth,  by  preventing  the  cultivation  and 
improvement  of  vast  districts  of  fertile  land  which  should  be  left 
free  to  the  landless  poor,  under  the  preemption  and  homestead  laws. 
It  is  a  wicked  compact  between  the  government  on  the  one  hand, 
and  land  speculators  on  the  other,  executed  at  the  nation's  expense, 
and  to  the  cruel  wrong  of  our  hardy  pioneers  who  are  thus  driven 
to  the  outskirts  of  civilization,  and  compelled  to  encounter  all  the 
increased  expense  and  danger  of  securing  homes  for  their  families, 
while  surrendering  such  local  advantages  in  the  way  of  schools, 


404  SEYMOUR  DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  PUBLIC  LANDS. 

churches,  roads,  and  other  improvements,  as  might  otherwise  be 
much  sooner  enjoyed.  Nearly  two  hundred  millions  of  acres  of  the 
public  domain  have  thus  been  granted  by  Congress  in  aid  of  rail- 
roads and  other  improvements,  and  must  fall  into  the  hands  of  cor- 
porations under  this  unfortunate  land  policy,  and  its  evils  will 
prove  as  intolerably  grievous  in  their  character  as  they  will  be 
enduring  in  time.  Gentlemen,  who  inaugurated  this  system  of 
national  plunder,  this  monstrous  conspiracy  against  the  productive 
wealth  of  the  country,  this  remorseless  crusade  against  the  rights 
of  settlers?  It  was  the  Democratic  party.  Democratic  leaders 
hatched  it  into  being.  Other  parties,  in  later  years,  have  been 
more  or  less  involved  in  it,  but  it  has  a  Democratic  genesis  and 
ancestry.  Such  men  as  Cass,  Benton,  and  Douglas,  championed 
it,  and  although  its  beginning  dates  back  many  years,  it  was  only 
fully  installed  through  the  energetic  leadership  of  the  latter,  in 
securing  the  magnificent  grant  of  lands  in  aid  of  the  Illinois  Cen- 
tral Railroad.  This  launched  it,  and  secured  its  triumph  as  adead- 
ing  feature  of  Democratic  policy.  I  beg,  however,  that  I  may  not 
be  misunderstood.  In  arraigning  this  system,  I  do  not  mean  to 
deny  that  it  has  done  much  to  develop  our  country,  notwithstanding 
the  evils  to  which  I  have  referred.  Nor  do  I  question  the  duty  of 
the  government  to  aid  important  works  of  internal  improvement, 
or  the  policy  of  doing  this  by  grants  of  land.  On  another  occasion, 
I  have  quoted  the  authoritative  words  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  that 
"  good  roads  are  equivalent  to  good  tools,"  that  "it  is  of  no  conse- 
quence whether  the  economy  of  labor  takes  place  in  extracting  the 
produce  from  the  soil,  or  in  conveying  it  to  the  place  where  it  is  to 
be  consumed,"  and  that  "  railways  and  canals  are  virtually  a  dimi- 
nution of  the  cost  of  production  of  all  things  sent  to  market  by 
them."  No  one  will  deny  that  these  enterprises  have  done  a  great 
service  to  the  country,  and  that  the  government,  by  all  reasonable 
means,  should  aid  them.  Let  Congress  provide  that  the  lands 
granted  in  all  such  cases  shall  be  sold  to  actual  settlers  only, 
in  limited  quantities,  and  for  a  price  which  shall  insure  their  pur- 
chase. This  will  settle  and  develop  the  country,  going  hand  in 
hand  with  the  preemption  and  homestead  laws,  and  at  the  same 
time  most  certainly  and  speedily  complete  the  improvement.  This 
is  the  Republican  doctrine,  already  adopted  in  the  legislation  of  the 
Fortieth  Congress,  and  which  the  Seymour  Democracy  have  stolen 
and  attempted  to  appropriate  as  their  particular  thunder. 

I  pass  to  the  subject  of  swamp  lands.     The  first  grant  by  Con- 
gress of  "  swamp  and  overflowed  land  "  was  made  in  the  year  1849, 


SEYMOUR   DEMOCRACY   AND   THE  PUBLIC   LANDS.    405 

to  the  State  of  Louisiana.  This  was  followed  the  next  year  by  a 
general  law,  granting  such  lands  to  all  the  States  in  which  they 
were  situated.  The  lands  claimed  under  this  legislation  have  crown 
into  immense  proportions,  their  character  as  swamp  lands  having 
been  adjudicated  in  the  interest  of  the  States,  and  generally  in 
accordance  with  surveys  made  immediately  after  the  season  of  their 
overflow.  The  total  amount  of  selections  already  made  is  about 
sixty  millions  of  acres,  and  not  far  from  forty-five  millions  have 
actually  been  patented,  a  very  large  portion  of  which  is  dry  land, 
and  among  the  very  best  the  nation*owned. 

The  management  of  these  lands,  whether  in  the  Western  or 
Southern  States,  has  been  most  unfortunate  and  ruinous.  This 
is  especially  true  of  Mississippi,  Louisiana,  Arkansas,  and  Florida, 
these  four  States  alone  having  secured,  by  false  pretenses,  nearly 
twenty-eight  millions  of  acres.  Instead  of  extending  our  well  un- 
derstood land  policy  over  these  regions,  and  reclaiming  them  by 
individual  enterprise  and  actual  settlement,  Congress  was  pre- 
vailed upon  to  hand  them  over  to  the  tender  mercies  of  these 
States,  on  the  ground,  now  well  known  to  have  been  fabricated,  that 
the  lands  were  of  little  or  no  value,  and  on  the  assurance,  equally 
false,  that  the  States  would  reclaim  them,  which,  it  was  alleged, 
the  General  Government  could  not  afford  to  do.  After  these  lands 
became  the  property  of  the  States,  they  were  sold  in  great  bodies 
to  speculators,  the  price,  as  I  am  advised,  ranging  from  twenty  to 
eighty  cents  per  acre,  and  the  purchasers  being  such  men  as  Jacob 
Thompson,  of  Mississippi,  Robert  W.  Johnson,  of  Arkansas, 
Toombs,  of  Georgia,  and  other  Democratic  thieves  and  rebels, 
who  doubtless  hold  the  lands  in  their  grasp  to-day.  According  to 
official  tables  furnished  by  the  General  Land  Office,  there  are  now 
in  the  five  land  States  of  the  South  more  than  fifty-two  millions 
of  acres  of  unimproved  land  held  by  monopolists,  while  more  than 
two  thirds  of  the  people  are  landless  ;  and  if  you  exclude  the  towns 
and  cities  of  those  States,  more  than  nine  tenths  of  their  popula- 
tion are  without  a  home  of  their  own.  These  are  very  melan- 
choly facts,  and  they  are  the  fruit  of  Democratic  policy.  Demo- 
cratic tactics,  cunningly  employed  by  Southern  members,  carried 
our  swamp  land  laws  through  a  Democratic  Congress,  while  the 
frightful  maladministration  of  these  lands  which  followed  was  con- 
cocted  and  consummated  by  Democratic  States. 

Such  is  the  Democratic  record.  Democrats  have  been  consist- 
ently and  steadfastly  on  the  side  of  monopolies  of  the  soil.  They 
have  been  unflinchingly  in  the  wrong.     They  have  scouted  every 


406     SEYMOUR  DEMOCRACY   AND   THE   PUBLIC  LANDS. 

attempt  to  check  or  mitigate  the  evils  to  which  I  have  just  referred, 
or  to  make  the  lands  of  the  government  accessible  to  the  rank  and 
file  of  the  laboring  poor.  I  offer  a  single  illustration.  Early  in 
the  Congress  which  met  in  December,  1863,  I  had  the  honor  to 
report  a  bill  providing  that  all  lands  which  should  be  sold  for  non- 
payment of  federal  taxes  in  the  insurrectionary  districts,  or  under 
the  internal  revenue  law,  or  under  proceedings  in  rem  under  the 
act  to  suppress  insurrection  and  to  punish  treason  and  rebellion, 
should  be  bid  off  to  the  government,  certified  over  to  the  Secretary 
of  the  Interior,  and  thenceforward  become  a  part  of  the  public 
unappropriated  domain.  It  further  provided  that  these  lands 
should  be  surveyed  and  parceled  out  into  small  homesteads  among 
the  soldiers  and  seamen  of  the  army  and  navy,  as  a  tribute  to  their 
valor,  as  a  fit  chastisement  of  the  rebel  chiefs,  and  especially  as  the 
basis  of  Democratic  equality  in  these  regions.  Had  the  measure 
prevailed,  coupled  with  the  policy  of  confiscation,  it  would  have 
wrested  from  the  rebel  leaders  from  one  half  to  three  fourths  of 
the  cultivated  lands  of  the  South,  without  disturbing  the  rights  of 
property  of  the  great  body  of  their  people,  who  were  never  allowed 
by  the  Southern  Democracy  to  own  land.  The  great  estates  of 
Thompson,  Davis,  Toombs,  Wigfall,  and  other  rebels,  would  have 
been  dismembered,  and  real  Democracy  would  have  been  installed 
upon  their  ruins,  insuring  liberty,  order,  and  law,  where  the  great 
land-holding  rebels  are  now  trampling  the  homeless  poor  under 
their  feet  and  seriously  threatening  to  plunge  the  nation  again 
into  the  horrors  of  civil  war.  The  bill  passed  the  House  by  a 
strong  majority,  every  affirmative  vote  being  Republican,  and  every 
negative  vote,  64  in  all,  being  Democratic.  It  is  true,  that  this 
bill  involved  other  questions  besides  that  of  the  monopoly  of 
Southern  lands,  and  the  vote  referred  to  proves  the  Democratic 
party  to  have  been,  four  years  ago,  what  it  is  to-day,  the  ally  and 
friend  of  rebels ;  but  it  proves,  also,  the  utter  hypocrisy  of  the 
pretense  now  set  up  in  the  New  York  Platform  of  Democratic 
friendship  for  the  landless  poor. 

I  come  now  to  the  homestead  policy.  This  will  ever  stand 
forth  as  one  of  the  great  landmarks  of  our  political  history.  As  I 
have  often  said,  it  has  clone  more  to  make  the  American  name 
honored  and  loved  among  the  Christian  nations  of  the  earth  than 
any  single  act  of  legislation  since  the  days  of  Washington.  It  is, 
at  once,  an  enduring  monument  of  legislative  wisdom  and  benefi- 
cence,  and  a  crown  of  unfading  honor  to  the  Republican  party, 
which  finally  secured  its  triumph.     But  what  is  the  Democratic 


SEYMOUR  DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  PUBLIC  LANDS.    407 

record  on  this  issue  ?  The  views  of  General  Jackson  on  the  land 
question  were  in  the  highest  degree  creditable  to  his  sagacity  and 
patriotism  ;  but  he  seems  to  have  been  utterly  powerless  to  im- 
press them  upon  the  general  mind  of  his  party.  The  terrible  evils 
of  land  speculation  reached  their  high  tide  under  the  Democratic 
administrations  of  Jackson  and  Van  Buren.  Those  most  conver- 
sant with  the  subject  have  estimated  that  in  the  year  1835  alone 
about  eight  millions  of  acres  of  the  public  lands  passed  into  the 
hands  of  speculators.  Of  course,  the  money  thus  invested  was 
withdrawn  from  praiseworthy  enterprises  and  the  ordinary  uses  of 
commerce,  and  sunk  in  the  forests  of  the  West  which  were  allowed 
to  yield  no  return.  This  system  of  legalized  landlordism,  as  I 
observed  last  winter  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  this  practical 
inauguration  among  us  of  the  feudalism  of  the  Old  World,  is  the 
very  climax  of  legislative  madness.  It  cheats  the  poor  settler,  and 
by  dooming  vast  tracts  of  fertile  lands  to  barrenness  becomes  a 
fatal  hinderance  to  agricultural  wealth,  and  to  commerce  and  man- 
ufactures which  draw  their  life  from  the  soil. 

Instead  of  flourishing  towns  and  villages,  small  homesteads,  and 
an  independent  yeomanry,  with  the  attendant  blessings  of  churches 
and  free  schools,  it  consigns  the  fertile  plains  of  the  West  to  the 
tender  mercies  of  the  monopolist,  whose  greed  alone  is  his  law. 
Instead  of  opening  our  vacant  lands  to  the  stream  of  emigration 
which  would  pour  in  from  the  old  States,  and  thus  augment  our 
exports  and  imports  through  increased  production,  it  leaves  the 
country  a  wilderness,  or  inhabited  only  by  a  miserable  tenantry 
under  the  control  of  absentee  landlords.  Instead  of  taking  the 
pioneer  into  the  fatherly  keeping  of  the  government,  and  stimulat- 
ing the  spirit  of  adventure  by  the  offer  of  a  free  home  in  the 
wilderness,  it  treats  him  as  a  virtual  outcast  by  driving  him  be- 
yond the  possessions  of  the  speculator,  for  whose  interest  he  is 
compelled  to  toil.  I  need  not  dwell  on  this  subject  before  an 
intelligent  Western  audience,  and  I  have,  besides,  fully  portrayed 
the  direful  effects  of  land  speculation  on  other  occasions ;  and  I 
only  refer  to  them  now  for  the  purpose  of  reminding  the  country, 
and  especially  our  fellow-citizens  of  Democratic  descent,  that  these 
evils  have  found  their  congenial  home  and  natural  shelter  in  the 
Democratic  organization.  Many  long  years  ago  would  the  country 
have  been  saved  from  their  ravages,  if  the  Democratic  party  had 
willed  it. 

But  I  return  now  to  the  homestead  policy.  I  was  in  the  Con- 
gress of  1849,  when  the  first  homestead  bill  was  introduced,  and  I 


408     SEYMOUR   DEMOCRACY   AND   THE   PUBLIC   LANDS. 

feel  quite  sure  that  I  can  count  on  the  ends  of  my  fingers  the 
Democrats  of  both  Houses  who  favored  the  measure.  It  was 
almost  universally  denounced  by  the  party  as  a  scheme  of  "  Dem- 
agogism,"  of  "  Agrarianism,"  of  "  Free  Soilism,"  and  not  even 
"Abolitionism"  itself  was  more  bitterly  loathed  and  execrated. 
This  was  logically  inevitable.  The  slave  power  owned  the  Dem- 
ocratic party,  body  and  soul,  but  the  slave  power  itself  could  not 
live  without  the  aristocratic  foothold  of  large  landed  estates.  A 
policy,  therefore,  which  recognized  the  honorableness  of  toil, 
and  the  common  and  equal  rights  of  the  million  on  the  lands  of 
the  government,  must,  of  necessity,  be  fatal  to  slavery,  if  sanc- 
tioned. The  step,  once  taken,  could  never  be  retraced.  This  the 
leaders  perfectly  understood,  and  the  rank  and  file  faithfully  fol- 
lowed them.  Repeated  efforts  to  carry  the  homestead  policy  were 
renewed  during  the  administrations  of  Pierce  and  Buchanan, 
but  in  every  instance,  as  the  Congressional  record  will  show,  they 
were  defeated  by  Democratic  opposition.  A  homestead  bill  did 
finally  prevail  in  both  Houses  toward  the  close  of  the  Thirty-sixth 
Congress,  a  sufficient  number  of  the  better  class  of  Democrats 
joining  the  Republicans  to  accomplish  the  purpose,  but  the  act  was 
vetoed  by  one  James  Buchanan,  whose  chosen  bedfellows  were 
such  men  as  Davis,  Floyd,  and  Thompson,  and  who  gloried  in 
wallowing  in  the  mire  of  Democratic  depravity,  while  bending 
his  cowardly  back  under  the  lash  of  his  Southern  drivers  just  as 
often  as  they  saw  fit  to  command  him. 

At  last,  under  a  Republican  administration,  the  Homestead  Law 
of  1862  was  enacted ;  and  the  only  honor  that  can  be  accorded  to 
the  Democratic  party  is,  that  its  opposition,  which  was  shown  on 
the  final  vote  in  both  Houses,  had  gradually  grown  smaller  and 
smaller,  as  the  supremacy  of  slavery  in  the  United  States  continued 
to  be  threatened.  Such  is  the  ugly  and  damaging  record  which 
history  must  write  down  against  the  party,  whose  leaders  at  New 
York  have  added  to  their  other  sins  that  of  the  most  transparent 
demagogism  in  dealing  with  the  question  of  our  public  lands. 

But  the  Democratic  record  on  the  homestead  question  does  not 
end  here.  At  the  close  of  the  rebellion,  there  remained  in  the 
States  of  Alabama,  Mississippi,  Louisiana,  Arkansas,  and  Florida, 
about  forty-six  millions  of  acres  of  surveyed,  unsold  public  lands. 
Just  as  soon  as  the  land  offices  in  these  States  could  be  got  in  run- 
nine;  order  the  whole  of  these  lands  would  be  liable  to  be  bought 
up  in  large  bodies  by  rebel  speculators  and  monopolists.  The  men 
>who  had  secured  so  cruel  a  monopoly  of  the  swamp   lands,  and 


SEYMOUR   DEMOCRACY   AND   THE   PUBLIC   LANDS.    409 

whose  greed  and  rapacity  remained  as  untamed  by  their  defeat  as 
their  hatred  of  the  negroes  and  their  contempt  for  the  poor  whites, 
would,  of  course,  spare  no  opportunity  in  the  way  of  their  further 
aggrandizement.  One  of  the  first  duties  of  the  Thirty-ninth  Con- 
gress, therefore,  was  to  deal  with  the  practical  question  thus  pres- 
ented ;  and  a  bill  was  accordingly  reported  from  the  House  Com- 
mittee on  Public  Lands,  extending  the  Homestead  Law  over  these 
regions  in  eighty  acre  allotments,  and  forbidding,  absolutely,  all 
further  sales.  The  effect  of  this  would  be  to  dedicate  to  actual 
occupancy  and  tillage  the  whole  of  these  millions  of  acres,  in  the 
interest  of  the  landless  poor,  black  and  white,  and  in  the  interest 
of  the  nation  itself  through  the  increase  of  its  productive  wealth. 
Dividing  the  aggregate  of  these  lands  by  80,  will  give  575,000 
homesteads  to  that  manv  heads  of  families  ;  and  allowing  each  head 
of  a  family  to  represent,  on  an  average,  five  persons,  these  lands 
would  give  homes  and  shelter  to  2,875,000  people,  who  must  else 
be  the  mere  supplicants  for  such  favors  as  a  relentless  landed  aris- 
tocracy may  see  fit  to  bestow.  If  we  suppose  one  half  of  these  lands 
unfit  for  cultivation,  there  would  still  remain  enough  to  supply 
nearly  a  million  and  a  half  of  the  homeless  poor  in  these  States ; 
and  I  think  I  am  safe,  therefore,  in  saying  that  of  all  the  meas- 
ures that  have  been  proposed  in  any  quarter  looking  to  the  regen- 
eration of  these  blasted  regions,  this  may  fairly  be  regarded  as  one 
of  the  most  beneficent  and  far-reaching.  It  would  lay  the  founda- 
tions of  a  true  democracy,  and  a  genuine  civilization,  where  the 
curses  of  chattel  slavery  on  the  one  hand,  and  wages  slavery  on 
the  other,  have  so  long  wielded  their  baleful  power  through  the 
monopoly  of  the  soil.  It  would  furnish  a  blessed  outlet  through 
which  the  helpless  poor  could  escape  from  threatened  suffocation 
and  death,  and  at  the  same  time  point  the  way  to  other  meas- 
ures of  relief,  still  more  prophetic  of  a  new  heaven  and  a  new 
earth  in  these  latitudes,  founded  on  the  ruins  of  the  past.  The 
bill  passed  the  House,  and  in  a  modified  form  went  through  the 
Senate  ;  and  greatly  to  the  general  amazement  it  was  signed  by 
Andrew  Johnson,  who,  just  at  that  time,  seems  to  have  been 
"  clothed  and  in  his  right  mind,"  or,  at  least,  not  quite  so  drunk  as 
he  had  been  on  other  occasions.  Under  this  law,  the  poor  of  the 
South,  whether  white  or  black,  are  selecting  their  homesteads, 
building  their  cabins,  putting  up  their  fences,  and  thus  slowly  but 
surely  hewing  out  their  way  to  independence  while  becoming  the 
natural  allies  of  the  public  good.  They  have  already  reclaimed 
and  settled  many  thousands  of  acres,  and  their  progress  will  be  more 


410     SEYMOUR   DEMOCRACY  AND   THE   PUBLIC  LANDS. 

and  more  rapid  as  the  rebel  element  of  the  South  shall  be  subdued. 
The  policy  of  the  law  has  been,  and  doubtless  will  continue  to  be, 
obstructed,  but  it  will  be  carried  out ;  and  just  so  far  and  so  fast  as 
this  shall  be  done,  it  will  undermine  the  great  landed  aristocracy 
which  brought  on  the  war  and  is  now  the  only  obstacle  to  lasting 
peace. 

Gentlemen,  what  is  the  Democratic  record  on  this  most  righteous 
and  perfectly  unobjectionable  measure,  proposing  to  save  forty-six 
millions  of  acres  of  land  from  the  clutches  of  rebel  monopolists, 
and  set  them  apart  in  small  homesteads  for  productive  wealth  and 
as  homes  for  the  poor  ? 

In  the  House  of  Representatives,  on  the  7th  of  February,  1866, 
Mr.  Taber,  a  Democrat  from  New  York,  moved  so  to  amend  the 
bill  as  to  allow  its  benefits  to  pardoned  rebels  in  common  with 
loyal  men,  and  in  contravention  of  the  Homestead  Law  of  1862. 
The  yeas  and  nays  were  ordered  on  this  motion,  and  resulted : 
yeas,  37,  all  Democrats  save  six  ;  and  nays,  104,  all  Republicans. 

The  next  day,  on  the  passage  of  the  bill,  the  yeas  and  nays  were 
again  ordered,  and  the  Democrats  having  signally  failed  to  have 
rebels  included  in  its  proposed  benefits,  the  vote  stood,  yeas,  112, 
all  Republicans ;  and  nays,  24,  all  Democrats  but  two.  What  a 
beautiful  and  blessed  record  for  the  party  which  resolves,  in  its 
Seymour  Platform,  "  that  the  public  lands  should  be  distributed, 
as  widely  as  possible,  among  the  people,  and  should  be  disposed  of 
either  under  the  preemption  or  homestead  laws,  or  sold  in  reason- 
able quantities,  and  to  none  but  actual  occupants."  If  our  Dem- 
ocratic leaders  have  not  completely  outlived  all  sense  of  shame,  I 
hope  I  may  be  able  to  rekindle  it  by  holding  up  this  Democratic 
vote  on  the  Southern  Homestead  Law  as  a  commentary  on  their 
New  York  resolution. 

Gentlemen,  let  me  now  follow  the  Democratic  record  one  step 
further,  for  I  desire  to  expose  the  utter  hollowness  and  mockery 
of  the  National  Democratic  Platform,  respecting  the  land  policy 
of  the  United  States.  I  deem  this  at  once  a  public  duty  and  a 
public  service,  and  should  reproach  myself  were  I  to  shrink  from 
its  performance  to  the  extent  of  my  ability. 

In  the  year  1856,  Congress  granted  to  the  States  of  Alabama, 
Mississippi,  Louisiana,  and  Florida,  lands  amounting  in  the  aggre- 
gate to  nearly  five  millions  of  acres,  to  aid  them  in  building  sundry 
railroads,  and  gave  them  ten  years  within  which  to  comply  with 
the  conditions  of  the  grant.  These  States,  not  long  afterward, 
created  corporations  for  the  purpose  of  accepting  the  grants  and 


SEYMOUR  DEMOCRACY  AND   THE   PUBLIC   LANDS.    411 

performing  the  work  as  to  several  of  the  roads,  but  little,  in  fact, 
was  done,  prior  to  the  breaking  out  of  the  rebellion.  This  event, 
of  course,  put  a  stop  to  all  further  movements,  but  'it  did  not 
excuse  these  corporations,  for  every  one  of  them,  on  the  initiation 
of  civil  war,  promptly  espoused  the  rebel  cause,  and  contributed 
all  their  resources  to  the  work  of  dismembering  the  Union.  They 
are,  therefore,  not  only  inexcusable,  but  in  common  with  the 
States  which  created  them  are  criminally  recreant  to  their  obliga- 
tions ;  for  they  not  only  failed  to  perform  their  engagements,  or 
even  to  attempt  it,  but  signalized  their  bad  faith  by  treason.  The 
expiration  of  these  grants  by  limitation  caused  the  forfeiture  of 
these  lands  to  the  United  States,  but  without  an  act  of  Congress 
declaring  the  forfeiture  they  must  remain  tied  up  in  the  hands 
of  rebel  corporations,  and  could  not  be  made  available  for  settle- 
ment by  loyal  men.  These  lands  are  among  the  most  fertile  and 
desirable  in  the  entire  South.  The  New  Orleans,  Opelousas,  and 
Great  Western  Railroad  Company  alone  holds  to-day,  as  a  frightful 
monopoly,  nearly  a  million  of  acres  on  which  the  landless  poor  of 
Louisiana  are  sighing  for  the  privilege  of  securing  homesteads.  In 
other  sections  the  lands  are,  perhaps,  still  more  valuable,  having 
been  selected  along  the  lines  of  mere  roads  on  paper,  where  no 
attempt  has  been  made  to  build  them,  and  no  purpose  to  do  so  was 
ever  entertained.  Every  one  can  comprehend  the  mischief  of 
these  land  grants,  unaccompanied  by  any  performance  of  their 
conditions,  and  aggravated  by  the  treason  both  of  the  States  and 
people  intended  to  be  benefited  by  them.  They  not  only  con- 
verted five  millions  of  acres  of  choice,  lands  into  a  wicked  mo- 
nopoly, but  hindered  settlements  on  the  corresponding  even 
numbered  sections  to  an  equal  amount,  and  to  some  extent  on 
the  lands  adjacent  to  the  belt  composing  the  odd  and  even  sec- 
tions. That  these  monopolies  should  be  broken  up,  independent 
of  the  question  of  their  treasonable  character,  is  most  obvious. 
That  multitudes  of  the  landless  and  loyal  poor  of  these  States  are 
hungering  and  thirsting  for  the  opportunity  of  acquiring  homes 
upon  them,  is  perfectly  well  known.  That  the  Southern  Homestead 
Law  should  at  once  be  extended,  and  applied  to  them,  in  the  inter- 
est of  that  class  of  people,  is  morally  self-evident.  That  five  millions 
of  acres  would  give  homesteads  of  eighty  acres  each  to  sixty-two 
thousand  five  hundred  heads  of  families,  and  support  a  population 
of  three  hundred  and  twelve  thousand  five  hundred,  is  as  true  as 
arithmetic.  In  the  clear  light  of  these  facts,  what  was  the  duty  of 
Congress?     No  loyal  man  will  hesitate  for  an  answer      It  was  to 


412     SEYMOUR  DEMOCRACY   AND   THE   PUBLIC   LANDS. 

wrest  these  lands  from  rebel  monopolists,  and  extend  over  them 
the  Homestead  Law  of  June  21,  1866.  I  will  feel  under  great 
obligations  to  any  man  who  will  give  me  a' single  valid  reason  why 
this  should  not  be  done.  No  such  reason  has  been  given,  or  can 
be  given,  either  in  Congress  or  out  of  it.  So  believing,  I  intro- 
duced a  bill  of  the  character  indicated,  at  the  July  session  of 
Congress,  now  over  a  year  ago.  It  was  debated  at  some  length 
during  the  past  winter,  and  finally  passed  the  House,  the  Senate 
not  having  found  time  to  consider  it  prior  to  the  late  adjournment. 

Gentlemen,  do  you  need  that  I  should  tell  you  how  the  De- 
mocracy of  the  House  recorded  their  votes  ?  The  record  is  not 
now  before  me,  but  my  distinct  recollection  is,  that  while  the 
measure  received  the  general  support  of  the  Republican  side  of  the 
House  it  encountered  the  hostile  vote  of  every  Democrat  who 
was  present.  True  to  the  traitors  of  the  South  during  the  war, 
true  to  the  vanquished  rebels  since  its  close,  and  true  to  the 
infernal  spirit  of  monopoly  and  plunder,  this  last  act  of  graceless 
recreancy  to  justice  and  decency  evinces  a  consistency  and  cour- 
age which  find  no  counterpart  save  in  their  insensibility  to  the 
claims  of  humanity  and  patriotism. 

Gentlemen,  in  this  condensed  record  of  the  action  of  our  polit- 
ical opponents  on  the  land  question,  you  will  observe  that  I  have 
only  referred,  incidentally,  to  the  record  of  our  own  party.  That 
is  a  subject  upon  which  I  have  no  time  to  enter  to-day,  but  which 
naturally  suggests  a  far  more  pleasant  task  than  the  one  I  have 
been  performing.  Let  me  say,  however,  in  the  interests  of  frank- 
ness and  fair  dealing,  that  I  do  not  hold  the  Republican  party 
wholly  blameless  in  its  action  upon  the  same  question.  Repub- 
licans joined  hands  with  the  Democrats  in  the  passage  of  the  Agri- 
cultural College  Act  of  1862,  the  provisions  of  which,  authorizing 
the  issue  of  land-scrip,  are  exceedingly  mischievous  and  cannot 
be  defended.  I  find,  however,  that  of  the  twenty-five  men  in  the 
House  of  Representatives  who  recorded  their  votes  against  it, 
twenty  were  Republicans.  Republicans  as  well  as  Democrats  are 
likewise  involved  in  the  frightful  land  monopolies  created  of  late 
years  by  our  most  execrable  system  of  Indian  treaties,  which  I 
have  had  occasion  to  denounce,  in  very  expressive  words,  in  the 
House  of  Representatives.  But  the  worst  of  these  treaties,  which 
have  generally  been  concocted  in  secret  by  a  few  select  thieves, 
have  been  most  emphatically  condemned,  together  with  the  system 
itself,  by  the  lower  branch  of  our  Republican  Congress  ;  and  in  the 
Senate,  I  believe,  the  only  opposition  they  have  encountered  has 


SEYMOUR  DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  PUBLIC  LANDS.  413 

f 

come  from  the  Republican  side  of  the  chamber,  while  the  leading 
champion  of  the  late  Osage  Treaty,  by  far  the  most  atrocious  of 
them  all,  was  Senator  Doolittle,  of  Wisconsin,  who  is  now 
recognized  as  one  of  the  ablest  leaders  of  the  Democratic  party. 
Republicans  are  willing  to  face  their  own  record,  in  searching  out 
that  of  their  foes ;  but  if  they  were  not,  it  would  furnish  no  valid 
excuse  for  the  deceitful  and  self-righteous  pretensions  of  the  Dem- 
ocratic leaders  which  I  have  endeavored  to  expose. 

And  now,  in  conclusion,  while  I  ask  you  to  recall  the  language 
of  this  famous  resolution,  and  the  empty  and  impudent  strut  with 
which  it  was  fulminated  in  the  late  National  Convention,  let  me 
recapitulate  the  chief  points  of  interest  in  this  most  dishonored  and 
scandalous  Democratic  record  on  the  land  question.  I  ask  you  to 
remember  that  the  Democratic  party  inaugurated  the  policy  of  land 
grants  in  aid  of  canals  and  railroads,  unguarded  by  any  conditions 
looking  to  the  multiplication  of  homesteads,  or  the  settlement 
and  productive  wealth  of  the  soil ;  thus  creating  monstrous  and 
rapacious  monopolies  of  the  public  lands,  consigning  great  stretches 
of  territory  to  solitude,  and  hindering  the  industrial  progress  and 
development  of  the  country.  Remember  that  the  swamp  land  sys- 
tem, born  of  Democratic  folly,  misrule,  and  plunder,  and  fruitful 
of  evil  everywhere,  has  been  fearfully  ruinous  in  the  South,  breath- 
ing new  life  into  the  already  alarming  power  of  land  monopoly, 
trampling  down  the  rights  of  the  poor,  and  consolidating  the  great 
aristocratic  power  whose  madness  at  last  ripened  into  the  rebellion. 
Remember,  that  during  the  war,  when  a  magnificent  opportunity 
was  offered  for  breaking  up  the  gigantic  power  of  landlordism  in 
the  States  of  the  South,  and  of  laying  the  foundations  of  republican 
liberty  on  the  enduring  granite  of  justice  and  the  equal  rights  of 
man,  the  Democratic  party  spurned  it,  and,  with  alacrity,  rushed 
into  the  embrace  of  the  bloated  aristocrats  whose  creed  has  ever 
been  that  "  capital  should  own  labor."  Remember,  that  the  Dem- 
ocratic party,  ever  dominated  by  the  great  landed  power  of  the 
South  in  the  form  of  African  slavery,  has  been  the  consistent  and 
inflexible  foe  of  the  homestead  policy,  and  has  thus  branded  itself 
as  infidel  to  the  rights  of  labor,  false  to  its  professed  creed  of 
equal  rights  for  all  men,  and  true  only  to  its  cherished  fellowship 
with  aristocracy  and  privilege.  Remember,  that  two  years  ago, 
when  the  proposition  was  made  in  Congress  to  rescue  forty-six 
millions  of  acres  of  public  lands  in  the  South  from  the  control  of 
traitors,  and  to  carve  them  up  into  small  homesteads  for  the  loyal 
poor,  thus  making  an  entering  wedge  to  other  measures  promising 


414     SEYMOUR  DEMOCRACY   AND   THE  PUBLIC  LANDS. 


I 


the  complete  regeneration  of  society  in  that  region,  every  Demo- 
crat in  the  House  of  Representatives  recorded  his  vote  against  it. 
Remember,  finally,  that  only  a  few  months  since,  when  the  still 
more  palpably  righteous  proposition  was  made  to  extend  the  Home- 
stead Law  over  five  millions  of  acres  of  land  in  the  rich  valleys  of  the 
South,  and  already  under  the  control  of  rebel  railroad  companies, 
every  Democrat  in  the  House,  true  to  the  evil  genius  of  his  party, 
voted  in  the  interest  of  these  companies,  thus  mocking  the  fond 
hopes  of  thousands  of  the  toiling  poor  who  looked  to  these  lands 
as  a  glad  refuge  in  their  weary  conflict  with  hunger  and  want. 
This,  my  friends,  is  the  Democratic  record  on  the  land  question, 
in  brief  words.  This  is  the  historical  picture  which  I  hold,  "  as  a 
mirror  up  to  nature,"  and  in  the  light  of  which  I  impale  the  Dem- 
ocratic leaders  on  the  very  plank  they  have  plagiarized  from  the 
Republicans.  And  thus,  in  a  word,  have  I  nailed  to  the  pillory 
the  hypocritical  pretense  of  Democratic  orthodoxy  on  the  land 
policy  of  the  government,  and  Democratic  sympathy  for  the  land- 
less and  laboring  poor. 


HOW  TO  RESUME  SPECIE  PAYMENTS. 

IN  COMMITTEE   OF  THE   WHOLE    ON  THE   STATE    OF    THE  UNION,  FEB- 
RUARY 5,  1869. 

[At  this  time  both  Congress  and  the  country  were  surfeited  with  ambitious 
financial  theories,  not  one  of  which  accomplished  any  discoverable  good.  The 
simple  and  purely  practical  views  here  presented  wei'e  quite  naturally  suggested,  and 
their  utterance  is  deemed  to  have  been  timely.] 

Mr.  Chairman,  —  The  simple  and  obvious  solution  of  our 
financial  problem  is  to  be  found  in  the  reduction  of  expenditures 
and  the  increase  of  productive  capital.  This  is  the  chosen  and 
sure  way  to  specie  payments,  and  to  real  national  wealth ;  and  the 
time  has  come  to  confess  it,  and  to  plant  our  feet  on  the  solid 
ground  of  actual  facts.  The  country  has  been  fed  on  mere  theories 
long  enough.  The  brains  of  our  public  men  have  been  teeming 
with  ambitious  schemes  of  finance,  all  radically  differing  from  each 
other,  bewildering  rather  than  enlightening  the  general  mind, 
exciting  false  hopes,  and  kindling  among  the  people  a  feverish  dis- 
content, instead  of  invoking  the  spirit  of  patience  in  the  endeavor 
to  accept  the  real  facts  of  our  condition  and  the  lesson  which  they 
teach.  Other  methods  are  now  wanting.  Discarding  metaphysical 
projects,  and  putting  aside  the  folly  of  looking  to  the  government 
for  some  splendid  financial  panacea  which  shall  at  once  lift  from 
us  the  burden  of  our  debt  and  immortalize  its  discoverer,  we  must 
now  turn  to  the  plain  and  old-fashioned  ways  and  means  I  have 
mentioned.  There  is  no  royal  road  out  of  our  national  indebted- 
ness. There  is  no  short  cut  to  specie  payments  by  the  mere  flat 
of  law,  independent  of  our  actual  resources.  Legislation  can 
create  a  debt,  but  it  cannot  pay  it.  We  might  just  as  reasonably 
attempt  to  change  the  properties  of  the  triangle  by  act  of  Congress, 
as  to  fix  the  precise  day  on  which  our  national  debt  shall  be  fully 
paid,  or  our  greenbacks  redeemed  in  coin ;  since  we  have  no 
foreknowledge  of  the  course  of  the  seasons,  the  productiveness  of 
our  crops,  the  vicissitudes  of  trade,  the  character  and  influence  of 
future  legislation,  and  other  contingencies  which  must  vitally  affect 
our  financial  resources  at  any  given  time  hereafter.  Finance  is  no 
juggle,  no  sleight-of-hand  by  which  the  nation  can  be  relieved  of 


416  HOW   TO   RESUME    SPECIE   PAYMENTS. 

its  great  debt  without  actual  payment ;  nor  is  it  a  Black  Art,  ut- 
terly inscrutable  to  the  plain  common  sense  of  the  people.  Sir, 
what  we  want,  I  repeat,  is  economy  of  expenditure  and  increased 
production.  On  the  one  hand,  we  must  cut  down  all  appropria- 
tions to  the  lowest  practicable  figure  ;  refuse  all  frightful  subsidies 
to  railroads,  steamships,  and  kindred  projects  ;  revise  the  tariff 
and  tax  laws  in  the  interest  of  labor ;  and  so  reform  the  civil 
service  that  the  money  drawn  from  the  earnings  of  the  people 
shall  not  be  squandered  by  incompetent  and  corrupt  officials.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  government,  keeping  within  the  scope  of  its 
legitimate  powers,  must  remove  as  far  as  possible  all  obstructions 
to  industrial  development,  and  thus  encourage  foreign  immigration, 
the  extension  of  our  railways,  the  settlement  of  our  Western  States 
and  Territories,  and  the  profitable  exploration  of  our  mines.  It 
is  this  second  branch  of  my  subject,  Mr.  Chairman,  of  which  I 
wish  briefly  to  speak ;  but  before  I  do  this,  allow  me  to  refer  to 
some  very  instructive  and  encouraging  facts  and  figui'es  affecting 
our  condition  and  prospects  as  a  people. 

According  to  Commissioner  Wells,  one  million  natives  of  foreign 
countries  have  permanently  settled  in  the  United  States  from  the 
1st  day  of  July,  1865,  to  the  1st  day  of  December,  1868.  He 
says  that  investigations  have  been  made  which  show  that  these  im- 
migrants bring  with  them  on  an  average  eighty  dollars  per  head, 
while  their  average  value  as  producers  is  one  thousand  dollars 
each.  Immigration,  then,  since  the  close  of  the  war,  has  added 
eighty  million  dollars  directly,  and  five  hundred  million  dollars  in- 
directly, to  the  resources  of  the  country. 

Within  the  last  four  to  five  years  our  cotton  manufactures  have 
increased  nearly  thirty-two  per  cent.  The  increase  in  our  woolen 
manufactures  has  been  much  lanrer. 

The  product  of  pig-iron  from  1863  to  1868  has  grown  from  947 
tons  to  1,550,000  tons,  being  considerably  in  excess  of  that  of 
Great  Britain.  The  product  of  copper  from  1860  to  1867  has  in- 
creased from  6,000  tons  to  11,735  tons. 

The  product  of  petroleum  during  the  years  1864  and  1865 
averaged  30,000,000  gallons.  In  1867  it  was  over  67,000,000 
gallons,  and  for  1868,  up  to  the  18th  of  December,  it  was  94,- 
774,291  gallons. 

The  product  of  coal  during  the  past  three  years  has  averaged, 
annually,  nearly  13,000,000  tons. 

Our  lake  tonnage  in  1866  increased  twenty-four  per  cent.  ;  in 
1867,  eleven  per  cent. 


HOW  TO   RESUME   SPECIE  PAYMENTS.  417 

Our  average  monthly  consumption  of  sugars  for  the  year  ending 
November  30,  1868,  was  12,061,280  pounds  more  than  during  the 
same  period  in  the  year  1867  ;  and  our  average  monthly  consump- 
tion of  coffee  734  tons  more  than  during  the  same  period  of  the 
previous  year. 

The  increase  in  our  agricultural  products  has  been  not  less  re- 
markable. The  number  of  sheep  in  Ohio  in  1868  was  1,274,204 
greater  than  in  the  year  1865,  and  it  is  estimated  that  the  num- 
ber has  doubled  within  the  past  eight  years.  The  increase  of  her 
hogs  from  the  year  1865  to  that  of  1868  was  700,000.  The 
aggregate  of  her  corn,  wheat,  and  oats  in  1865  was  107,414,278 
bushels  ;  in  1866  it  was  118,061,911 ;  and  in  1867,  141,000,000. 
The  number  of  hogs  packed  at  the  West  in  1865-66  was  1,705,- 
955 ;  in  1866-67  it  was  2,490,791  ;  and  in  1867-68,  2,781,084. 
The  present  rate  of  increase  of  the  crop  of  Indian  corn  throughout 
the  whole  country  is  three  and  one  half  per  cent.,  and  the  crop  for 
the  year  1868  is  estimated  at  1,100,000,000  bushels.    In  the  \ear 

1867  Minnesota  exported  wheat  alone  amounting  to  12,000,000 
bushels,  which  sold  at  an  average  of  two  dollars  per  bushel,  in- 
creasing our  national  wealth  on  this  one  article  alone  twenty  four 
million  dollars  ;  and  it  is  estimated  that  not  over  two  per  cent,  of 
her  lands  have  yet  been  reduced  to  actual  settlement.  I  quote 
these  calculations  from  the  late  able  speech  of  Mr.  Windom,  one 
of  the  representatives  of  that  State. 

Our  cotton  crop  for  the  past  year  is  estimated  at  545,524  bales 
more  than  that  of  the  previous  yeai\  Our  railway  extension  since 
the  year  1835  has  averaged,  annually,  1,156  miles.  From  the 
year  1865,  and  inclusive  of  that  year,  nearly  8,000  miles  have  been 
constructed  in  the  United  States,  being  more  than  double  the 
annual  increase  prior  to  that  time.  Mr.  Wells  estimates  that  the 
gross  earnings  of  our  roads  pay  for  their  construction  in  a  little  more 
than  four  years.  The  total  annual  value  of  all  the  merchandise 
traffic  on  all  the  roads  at  present  equals  seven  billions  two  hundred 
and  seventy-three  millions  two  hundred  thousand  dollars.  From 
1851  to  1867  the  tonnage  transportation  has  increased  at  the  rate 
of  eight  hundred  per  cent,  and  the  actual  increase  has  been  42,- 
480,000  tons.  The  estimated  value  of  railway  merchandise  for 
the  past  sixteen  years  has  increased  at  the  rate  of  nearly  four 
hundred  millions  of  dollars  per  annum.     From  the  year  1858  to 

1868  the  increase  of  tonnage  on  all  the  roads  in  the  United  States 
has  been  sixteen  times  greater  than  the  increase  of  population. 

Within  the  ten  years  from  1850  to  1860,  our  population  has  in- 

27 


418  HOW   TO   RESUME    SPECIE  PAYMENTS. 

creased  fifty  times  faster  than  that  of  Great  Britain,  while  the  an- 
nual expenses  of  the  latter  are  one  hundred  and  nineteen  millions 
greater  than  ours.  During  the  railroad  era  of  our  country,  from 
the  year  1830  to  1860,  the  increase  of  our  wealth  was  five  hundred 
and  eight  per  cent.  From  18-10  to  1860,  our  percentage  of  increase 
was  two  hundred  and  fifty-six,  being  more  than  eighteen  times 
greater  than  that  of  Great  Britain  ;  and  the  most  remarkable  fact 
must  be  mentioned,  that  in  the  three  and  a  half  years  following 
the  close  of  the  war  we  have  paid  eight  hundred  millions  of  dollars 
of  our  national  debt. 

In  referring  to  our  railway  system  it  should  be  observed  that 
according  to  the  best  authorities  on  the  subject  our  foreign  im- 
migration increases  in  the  ratio  of  our  railway  extension,  and  that 
the  settlement  of  our  vacant  lands,  the  increase  of  productive 
wealth,  and  consequently  of  our  exports  and  imports,  conform  to 
the  same  general  principle.  It  should  likewise  be  remembered  that 
railway  extension  is  now  conceded  to  be  the  best  if  not  the  only 
solution  of  the  Indian  problem,  and  that  just  so  far  and  so  fast  as 
this  solution  shall  be  accomplished,  the  frightful  expenditures  de- 
manded by  our  Indian  wars  will  be  avoided.  According  to  official 
documents,  the  expense  of  suppressing  Indian  hostilities  in  the  years 
1864  and  1865  was  over  thirty  millions  of  dollars,  and  for  every 
dead  Indian  two  millions  of  dollars  were  expended.  Our  Indian 
troubles  for  the  past  six  years  have  cost  us  one  hundred  million 
dollars,  and  calculations  have  been  made  showing  that  our  several 
Indian  wars  within  the  past"  twenty  years  have  cost  us  seven 
hundred  and  fifty  millions.  The  present  current  expense  of  our 
Indian  wars  is  believed  to  be  one  million  dollars  per  week,  or 
about  one  hundred  and  forty-four  thousand  dollars  per  day. 
These. expenditures  are  startling,  but  they  will  be  constantly 
diminished  as  our  railways  are  extended,  with  the  swelling  column 
of  settlement  and  civilization  which  will  follow  along  their  lines, 
fill  up  our  distant  borders,  and  augment  our  productive  wealth. 

Mr.  Chairman,  this  encouraging  exhibit  of  our  national  resources 
and  material  development  would  be  wanting  in  its  true  value  and 
full  significance  if  not  considered  in  the  light  of  an  important  re- 
flection Avhich  it  naturally  suggests.  In  the  exact  proportion  that 
our  wealth  increases  our  national  debt  diminishes.  To  have  paid 
our  debt  of  1865  twenty-eight  years  ago  would  have  required 
ninety  per  cent,  of  all  the  property  of  the  United  States.  But 
the  payment  of  the  debt  of  1868  would  only  require  about  eight 
per  cent,    of  our  present  wealth.     The   ratio   of  increase   of  our 


HOW  TO  EESUME   SPECIE  PAYMENTS.  419 

wealth  from  1850  to  1860  was  nearly  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
four  and  one  half  per  cent.  ;  but  assuming  that  it  will  hereafter 
be  only  one  hundred  per  cent,  every  ten  years,  the  aggregate  of 
our  wealth  in  the  year  1900,  according  to  Commissioner  Wells, 
will  be  two  hundred  and  fifty-eight  billions  five  hundred  and 
fourteen  millions  of  dollars. 

In  1900,  therefore,  our  debt  will  be  only  one  eighth  as  great  a 
burden  as  it  is  now,  or  one  ninetieth  of  what  it  would  have  been 
on  the  property  of  1840.  A  tax  of  one  per  cent,  would  then  wipe 
out  the  entire  indebtedness,  while  now  it  requires  one  per  cent,  to 
pay  the  current  annual  expenses  of  the  government.  The  nation, 
therefore,  in  the  gratifying  growth  of  its  wealth  which  I  have 
sketched  is  growing  out  of  debt,  and  growing  so  fast  as  to  put  to 
flight  all  apprehension  as  to  our  financial  future.  What  it  wants 
.  is  free  scope,  and  the  untrammeled  use  of  its  resources  and  ener- 
gies ;  and  this  is  forcibly  illustrated  by  Commissioner  Wells  in 
his  reference  to  the  removal  of  the  tax  on  manufactures,  which 
compelled  the  Treasury  to  relinquish  at  least  one  hundred  and 
seventy  millions  of  dollars,  and  yet  by  stimulating  the  productive 
interests  of  the  country  it  accelerated  the  payment  of  our  debt.  It 
did  this,  he  says,  on  the  principle  that  the  power  of  contributing  to 
the  public  revenue  increases  geometrically  as  the  activity  of  pro- 
duction and  circulation  increases  arithmetically. 

What,  then,  Mr.  Chairman,  is  the  lesson  which  these  facts  and 
figures  plainly  teach  ?  Do  they  plead  for  some  marvelous  and  as 
yet  undiscovered  scheme  of  finance,  to  supersede  or  help  along  the 
natural  processes  which  we  have  seen  are  so  hopefully  at  work  ? 
I  have  already  answered  this  question.  The  true  financial  policy 
of  the  government  to-day  is  that  of  a  masterly  inactivity,  leaving 
the  great  forces  of  industry  and  trade  to  do  their  work,  to  "  un- 
cover our  mountains  of  gold  and  silver,"  to  build  our  railways,  to 
multiply  the  tillers  of  the  soil,  and  thus  to  solve  the  problem  of 
our  finances  by  the  creation  of  wealth.  "  All  that  government 
can  do,"-  says  Buckle,  "  is  to  afford  the  opportunity  of  progress; 
the  progress,  itself,  must  depend  upon  other  matters."  He  asserts, 
as  the  general  testimony  of  history,  that  the  best  laws  that  have 
been  enacted  in  any  countryare  those  by  which  some  former  laws 
were  repealed ;  and  that  while  the  power  of  government  for  evil 
is  incalculable,  its  power  for  good,  beyond  the  mere  preservation 
of  order  and  the  punishment  of  crime,  is  negative  only,  and  sim- 
ply auxiliary  to  natural  and  social  laws.  All  that  Congress  can  do 
to  improve  our  finances,  or  speed  the  payment  of  our  debt,  is  to 


420  HOW' TO   RESUME    SPECIE   PAYMENTS. 

remove  some  of  the  principal  obstructions  to  the  development  of 
out*  resources,  and  thus  "  to  afford  the  opportunity  of  progress  ;  " 
and  I  now  come  to  the  discussion  of  this  point. 

The  first  duty  of  Congress,  Mr.  Chairman,  is  to  forbid  the  fur- 
ther sale  of  another  acre  of  arable  public  land,  except  as  provided 
under  the  preemption  and  homestead  laws.  This  should  be  done 
instantly,  and  the  time  is  coming  when  our  failure  or  refusal  to  do 
it  will  be  regarded  with  inexpressible  surprise  and  sorrow.  We 
say  to  the  landless  poor  man,  "  Go  upon  any  portion  of  the  sur- 
veyed public  lands,  select  your  homestead,  occupy  and  improve  it, 
and  it  shall  be  yours."  But  we  say  to  the  speculator,  "  Go  also, 
with  the  free  license  of  Congress  to  throw  yourself  across  the 
track  of  our  struggling  pioneer  settlers,  by  buying  up  great  bodies 
of  choice  lands,  forcing  them  beyond  you  into  the  more  distant 
frontier,  or  compelling  them  to  surround  your  monopoly  by  their 
improved  homesteads,  which  shall  thus  make  you  rich  by  their 
toil  and  at  the  nation's  cost."  Sir,  such  a  policy  is  as  financially 
stupid  as  it  is  flagrantly  unjust.  It  has  marred  and  crippled  the 
Homestead  Law  from  the  beginning,  rendering  it  a  measure  of  half- 
way  reform  at  best.  On  another  occasion  I  have  shown  that  more 
than  thirty  millions  of  acres,  since  the  formation  of  the  govern- 
ment, have  fallen  into  the  grasp  of  monopolists  and  been  con- 
signed to  solitude,  through  the  regular  partnership  which  the  gov- 
ernment has  formed  with  the  speculator  to  cheat  the  poor  man  out 
of  his  right  to  a  home,  and  the  country  itself  out  of  the  productive 
wealth  which  these  millions  might  have  yielded  under  the  hand  of 
industry. 

Sir,  why  should  Congress  any  longer  tolerate  this  wretched  and 
ruinous  policy?  The  wealth  which  is  to  feed  our  commerce  and 
enable  us  to  pay  our  debt  must  be  dug  from  the  soil.  No  man  will 
dispute  this  fundamental  truth.  Then,  why  not  dedicate  the  whole 
of  our  remaining  rich  lands  to  actual  settlement  and  tillage,  and 
while  thus  increasing  our  wealth  provide  homes  and  independence 
for  the  poor  ?  Our  Puritan  ancestors,  prior  to  their  emigration  to 
Massachusetts  Bay,  issued  a  paper  in  which  they  declared  that 
"  the  whole  earth  was  the  Lord's  garden,  and  He  had  given  it  to 
the  sons  of  Adam,  to  be  tilled  and  improved  by  them."  And  they 
asked,  "  Why,  then,  should  any  stand  starving  for  places  of  habi- 
tation, and  in  the  mean  time  suffer  whole  countries,  as  profitable 
for  the  use  of  man,  to  lie  waste  without  any  improvement  ?  "  Sir, 
this  question,  so  earnestly  asked  by  the  Puritans  nearly  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  ago,  still  demands  an  answer,  and  in  the  name 


HOW   TO   RESUME   SPECIE  PAYMENTS..  421 

of  the  homeless  and  toiling  poor  of  our  land  I  ask  it  from  the  Con- 
gress of  the  United  States.  The  interests  of  humanity  and  the 
development  of  our  resources  go  hand  in  hand,  and  their  joint  plea 
cannot  much  longer  be  denied. 

During  the  fiscal  year  ending  June  30,  1868,  there  were  taken 
under  the  Southern  Homestead  Law,  in  the  five  land  States  to 
which  it  applies,  five  hundred  and  twenty-six  thousand  and  seventy- 
seven  acres.  During  the  preceding  year  there  were  taken  two  hun- 
dred and  sixty-four  thousand  four  hundred  and  eighty  acres  ;  and 
up  to  this  date  the  aggregate  amount  thus  appropriated  since  the  pas- 
sage of  the  law  cannot  be  less  than  a  million  acres,  supplying  twelve 
thousand  five  hundred  homesteads  or  farms  of  eighty  acres  each, 
as  an  addition  to  the  producing  power  of  the  South.  This  was 
done  by  dedicating  the  public  lands  in  these  States  to  actual  settle- 
ment only,  and  thus  rescuing  them  from  the  threatened  power  of 
the  speculator.  The  whole  number  of  acres  taken  during  the  last 
fiscal  year  under  the  Southern  and  general  homestead  laws  was  two 
millions  three  hundred  and  twenty-eight  thousand  nine  hundred 
and  twenty-three  acres  ;  and  the  aggregate  quantity  taken  from 
the  passage  of  the  original  Act  of  1862  to  June  30  of  last  year  was 
nine  millions  five  hundred  thousand  acres,  which  by  this  date  must 
have  swelled  to  ten  millions,  being  sufficient  for  one  hundred  and 
twenty-five  thousand  homesteads  of  eighty  acres  each.  The  set- 
tlements under  these  laws  are  steadily  increasing,  and  all  that  is 
wanting  to  the  full  sweep  of  their  beneficent  operation  is  the  pro- 
hibition by  Congress  of  the  further  sale  of  our  agricultural  lands 
for  speculative  purposes,  and  the  absolute  pledge  of  them,  in  rea- 
sonable homesteads,  to  productive  wealth.  This,  sir,  is  the  great 
demand  of  the  hour.  The  wide-spread  mischiefs  already  inflicted 
upon  our  country  by  a  false  policy  admit  of  no  remedy;  but  Con- 
gress holds  the  key  to  the  future,  in  the  power  to  forbid  all  further 
obstructions  to  the  settlement  and  improvement  of  the  public  do- 
main. In  the  exercise  of  this  power  the  Homestead  Law  would 
grow  to  its  full  stature,  and  have  free  course  in  accomplishing  the 
grand  work  for  which  it  was  intended.  Speculators  and  monopo- 
lists, having  no  longer  the  sanction  or  encouragement  of  the  gov- 
ernment, would  betake  themselves  to  more  worthy  pursuits.  Our 
foreign  immigration,  already  pouring  in  upon  our  shores  at  the 
rate  of  three  hundred  thousand  per  annum,  would  be  largely  in- 
creased through  the  motive  power  of  greatly  extended  facilities 
of  acquiring  homes  on  our  vacant  lands.  Railway  extension,  the 
increase  of  productive  wealth,  the  growth  of  our  exports  and  im- 


422  HOW   TO   RESUME   SPECIE   PAYMENTS. 

ports,  and  the  development  of  our  mines,  would  all  be  quickened 
by  this  practical  recognition  of  democratic  equality  and  national 
repudiation  of  the  principle  of  feudalism  in  these  States. 

Mr.  Chairman,  I  proceed  to  notice  another  serious  obstruction 
to,  productive  wealth  and  financial  prosperity  which  Congress 
should  at  once  remove.  I  allude  to  our  present  system  of  land 
grants  in  aid  of  railroads.  The  evils  of  this  system  have  become 
perfectly  appalling,  and  no  real  friend  of  the  country  can  contem- 
plate them  and  hold  his  peace.  Congress  first  fairly  inaugurated 
the  system  some  twenty  years  ago,  and  although  it  was  originally 
vicious,  it  has  for  years  past  been  constantly  growing  worse 
through  the  addition  to  it  of  new  features,  and  the  steadily  in- 
creasing size  of  the  grants.  Congress  has  granted  to  the  different 
lines  of  the  Pacific  railroads  alone  the  estimated  aggregate  of  one 
hundred  and  twenty-four  million  acres.  If  we  add  to  this  the  grants 
made  to  the  several  States  in  aid  of  railroads  and  other  works 
of  internal  improvement  it  will  foot  up  not  far  from  two  hundred 
million  acres.  This  immense  domain  has  passed  into  the  hands  of 
corporations,  and  under  the  terms  on  which  it  was  granted  they 
hold  it  as  a  complete  monopoly.  They  may  sell  it  to  actual  settlers 
in  moderate  homesteads,  or  they  may  sell  it  to  a  single  monopolist. 
They  may  sell  it  for  a  reasonable  price,  or  fix  upon  it  just  such  a 
price  as  they  please.  They  may  sell  it  to-morrow,  or  hold  it  forty 
years  for  a  rise  in  price  through  the  enhanced  value  to  be  added  to 
it  by  adjacent  settlements.  Regions  which  the  Commissioner  of 
the  General  Land  Office  fitly  describes  as  of"  empire  extent,"  and 
including  vast  bodies  of  the  richest  lands  in  the  nation,  are  placed 
entirely  beyond  the  power  of  our  pioneer  settlers.  To  the  home- 
stead claimant  and  preemptor  they  are  unknown,  or  known  only 
to  their  sorrow  and  disappointment.  The  landless  and  laboring 
poor  of  the  Republic,  who  do  their  full  share  in  fighting  its  battles . 
in  war,  must  pay  to  organized  avarice  just  such  a  tariff  as  it  may 
see  fit  to  exact  for  the  privilege  of  cultivating  the  earth  and  adding 
to  the  national  wealth.  The  Northern  Pacific  Railway  alone  has 
a  grant  forty  miles  wide,  extending  from  the  head  of  Lake  Supe- 
rior to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  and  containing  forty-seven  millions  of 
acres.  It  is  just  about  equal  in  extent  to  the  five  States  of  Penn- 
sylvania, New  Jersey,  Connecticut,  Massachusetts,  and  New  Hamp- 
shire, while  the  total  grants  made  to  all  our  various  roads  and  for 
other  works  of  internal  improvements  are  nearly  equal  to  the  en- 
tire area  of  the  thirteen  original  colonies  of  the  United  States. 

Sir,  will  any  gentleman  on  this  floor  defend  this  national  havoc 


HOW  TO  RESUME   SPECIE  PAYMENTS.  423 

and  spoliation?  Have  we,  as  the  representatives  of  the  people, 
the  rigid  to  commit  to  the  tender  mercies  of  monopolists  territory 
enough  for  a  score  of  principalities  and  kingdoms?  When  the 
nation  is  groaning  under  an  immense  debt  can  we  afford  to  slam 
the  door  in  the  faces  of  foreign  immigrants  and  our  own  people 
who  are  seeking  homes  on  our  vacant  lands,  and  anxious  to  coin 
their  labor  into  national  wealth  ?  Mr.  Chairman,  these  are  very 
practical  and  vital  questions,  and  every  passing  day  gives  to  them 
an  added  interest.  Railway  extension  has  become  a  passion  with 
our  men  of  capital  and  enterprise,  and  the  demand  for  land  grants 
meets  us  now  in  every  quarter,  at  every  turn,  and  is  pressed  with 
unparalleled  zeal.  There  are  now  pending  in  this  Congress  at 
least  fifty  bills,  asking  grants  of  land  for  railroads,  wagon-roads, 
and  canals,  and  covering  an  area  of  more  than  two  hundred  mill- 
ions of  acres.  The  Southern  States,  so  long  excluded  from  any 
share  in  these  grants,  are  doing  their  utmost  to  make  up  for  lost 
time.  Scores  of  new  bills  are  sometimes  presented  and  referred  in 
a  single  day;  and  judging  from  the  signs  of  the  times  the  con- 
tagion which  has  seized  Congress,  and  which  threatens  the  coun- 
try with  general  disaster,  has  only  fairly  begun. 

The  remedy,  Mr.  Chairman,  is  at  hand,  and  is  perfectly  simple 
and  easy.  Let  Congress  provide  that  all  future  grants  of  lands  in 
aid  of  railroads  shall  be  made  on  the  condition,  expressed  in  the 
act  making  the  grants,  that  they  shall  be  sold  to  actual  settlers 
only,  in  quantities  not  greater  than  one  quarter  section,  and  for  a 
price  not  exceeding  a  fixed  maximum.  This  will  effectually  de- 
stroy the  monopoly  which  else  would  exist,  and  while  furnishing 
immediate  aid  in  building  the  roads  will  settle  and  improve  the 
country  along  their  lines,  and  thus  create  a  local  business  for  their 
benefit.  Such  a  land  grant  policy  can  honestly  be  defended,  be- 
cause it  'harmonizes  the  interest  of  these  enterprises  with  the  set- 
tlement of  the  country  ;  and  it  seems  unaccountable  that  this 
should  not  have  been  seen  from  the  beginning.  A  bill  embodying 
this  reform  passed  this  House  at  the  last  session,  and  I  regret,  ex- 
ceedingly, that  it  sleeps  sweetly  in  the  complacent  embrace  of  the 
Chairman  of  the  Land  Committee  of  the  Senate,  and  that  by  its 
side  reposes  another  bill,  passed  by  this  House  about  a  year  ago, 
opening  to  homestead  settlement  nearly  five  million  acres  of  land 
in  the  Southern  States  which  for  years  have  been  tied  up  in  the 
hands  of  rebel  corporations,  while  the  homeless  poor  of  those 
States  have  longed  to  occupy  and  improve  them. 

Mr.  Chairman,  the  reform  of  our  policy  respecting  Indian  reser- 


424  HOW  TO   RESUME   SPECIE   PAYMENTS. 

rations  would  remove  a  further  and  very  serious  obstacle  to  pro- 
ductive wealth.  Within  the  past  seven  years  this  policy  has  been 
thoroughly  revolutionized.  Up  to  the  year  1860,  when  any  In- 
dian tribe  saw  fit  to  relinquish  the  right  to  its  lands,  the  uniform 
practice  of  the  government  was  to  provide  by  treaty  for  the  con- 
veyance of  their  lands  directly  to  the  United  States,  and  they 
thenceforward  became  subject  to  the  control  and  management  of 
Congress,  as  all  other  public  lands.  This  was  not  only  the  true 
policy,  but  it  was  enjoined  by  the  Constitution  in  the  authority 
given  to  Congress "  to  make  all  needful  rules  and  regulations 
respecting  the  territory  or  other  property  of  the  United  States." 
The  Indians  have  simply  a  right  of  occupancy  in  their  reservations, 
the  title  being  in  the  United  States  ;  and  the  treaty  making  power 
is  not  competent  to  change  the  land  policy  prescribed  by  Congress, 
but  is  itself  bound  by  that  policy. 

The  departure  from  this  principle  began  in  1861,  and  has  been 
persisted  in  ever  since.  One  of  the  most  notable  examples  of  this 
new  dispensation  was  the  late  treaty  with  the  Cherokee  Indians, 
by  which  eight  hundred  thousand  acres  were  authorized  to  be  sold 
in  a  body  to  a  single  purchaser,  at  the  rate  of  one  dollar  per  acre, 
thus  completely  withdrawing  what  would  otherwise  have  been  a 
part  of  the  public  domain  from  the  control  of  Congress.  The  In- 
dians desired  to  sell  to  the  government,  but  were  not  allowed  to  do 
so  ;  and  the  settlers  on  the  land  of  course  desired  to  adjust  their 
claims  with  the  United  States,  instead  of  the  monopolists  who 
bought  it.  It  was  a  disgraceful  transaction,  and  cannot  stand. 
Another  treaty,  made  with  the  Great  and  Little  Osage  Indians, 
authorized  the  disposition  of  over  three  millions  of  acres,  in  con- 
travention of  the  homestead  and  preemption  laws,  in  derogation  of 
the  authority  of  Congress,  and  without  excuse. 

Similar  treaties  have  been  made  with  the  Sac  and  Foxes,  the 
Delaware,  the  Kickapoo,  and  sundry  other  tribes,  by  which  vast 
bodies  of  lands  which  should  have  been  conveyed  directly  to  the 
United  States  have  passed  into  the  hands  of  railroad  corporations, 
or  individual  monopolists  ;  the  treaties  in  these  cases  providing  for 
the  location  and  building  of  important  lines  of  railroads  in  connec- 
tion with  these  operations  in  real  estate,  as  if  Congress  had  in  fact 
abdicated  its  interest  in  this  branch  of  legislation  in  favor  of  the 
Senate  and  the  savages.  By  far  the  most  remarkable  of  all  these 
transactions  is  the  last  Osage  treaty,  now  pending  in  the  Senate. 
It  provides  for  the  sale  of  a  body  of  land  in  Kansas  fifty  miles 
.wide  and   two  hundred  and  fifty  miles    long,  containing,   conse- 


HOW   TO   RESUME   SPECIE   PAYMENTS.  425 

quently,  twelve  thousand  five  hundred  square  miles,  or  eight  mill- 
ions of  acres,  which,  divided  by  one  hundred  and  sixty,  will  give  an 
aggregate  of  fifty  thousand  homesteads  of  one  hundred  and  sixty 
acres  each  ;  and  allowing  every  head  of  a  family  to  represent  an 
average  of  five  persons,  it  would  sustain  a  population  of  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  thousand.  The  territory  is  nearly  large  enough  to 
carve  out  of  it  three  such  States  as  Massachusetts,  Connecticut, 
and  Delaware. 

And  yet  the  whole  of  this  domain  is  conveyed  by  the  treaty  to 
a  single  railroad  corporation  in  Kansas,  in  utter  disregard  of  the 
rights  of  the  bond  fide  settlers  on  it,  in  defiance  of  the  authority 
of  Congress  over  our  Indian  reservations,  the  moment  the  right  of 
occupancy  is  relinquished,  and  in  shameless  disregard  of  the  equal 
rights  of  other  railroad  corporations  to  the  aid  of  the  government. 
All  this  land  is  sold  to  this  corporation  at  nineteen  cents  per  acre, 
on  a  credit  of  fifteen  years,  payable  in  equal  annual  installments, 
and  in  the  bonds  of  the  company  ;  and  without  any  reservation  to 
the  State  of  the  sixteenth  and  thirty-sixth  sections  for  educational 
purposes.  To  complete  this  picture  it  should  be  added,  that  this 
land  is  among  the  very  finest  in  the  State,  and  is  probably  wTorth 
at  least  ten  millions  of  dollars.  This  beautiful  and  celestial  per- 
formance —  the  blessed  progeny  of  a  meretricious  union  of  railroad 
rapacity  with  a  thieving  Indian  Commission  appointed  by  Andrew 
Johnson  —  is  now  before  the  Senate  for  ratification  ;  and  judging 
from  the  past,  and  considering  the  suspicious  cover  of  darkness 
under  which  the  Senate  acts  in  such  cases,  it  will  be  ratified.  If 
so,  the  consolation  will  be  that  the  act,  having  no  warrant  in  the 
Constitution,  will  have  no  binding  force.  Like  the  Cherokee  and 
kindred  treaties  it  will  be  pronounced  void,  whenever  the  question 
shall  be  fairly  submitted  to  the  federal  courts. 

But  the  policy  of  these  treaties  should  be  reversed  at  once,  and 
thus  avert  further  and  interminable  litigation  and  trouble*  hereafter. 
This  House  has  already  passed  a  joint  resolution  denying  their  va- 
lidity, and  directing  that  hereafter  no  patents  shall  be  issued  by  the 
President  to  purchasers  of  lands  in  such  cases  without  first  being 
authorized  by  law.  I  sincerely  hope  the  Senate  will  concur  in  this 
action,  and  thus  restore  the  ancient  policy  of  the  government  and 
the  rightful  authority  of  Congress.  No  man  can  defend  our  past 
action  in  thus  joining  hands  with  monopolists  in  squandering  our 
great  national  patrimony,  and  conspiring  against  the  productive  in- 
dustry of  the  nation.  Our  finances,  of  course,  are  deeply  involved 
in  this  question.  We  have  treaty  stipulations  with  about  one  hun- 


426  HOW   TO   EESUME   SPECIE  PAYMENTS. 

dred  and  fifty  Indian  tribes ;  and  the  aggregate  of  their  lands,  ac- 
cording to  official  statements  furnished  me  by  the  Commissioner  of 
Indian  Affairs,  is  one  hundred  and  ninety-one  million  seven  hundred 
and  fifty-five  thousand  two  hundred  and  four  acres ;  being  just 
about  equal  in  extent  to  the  lands  granted  in  aid  of  railroads.  The 
whole  of  this  immense  domain  is  threatened  by  the  frightful  policy 
now  in  full  blast,  and  must  succumb  to  the  baleful  power  of  rail- 
road corporations  and  land  robbers  if  Congress  shall  tamely  permit 
it.  If  we  are  ready  for  this  we  may  as  well  abolish  our  General 
Land  Office,  witfh  the  corresponding  committees  of  Congress,  at 
once,  surrendering  their  functions  to  the  Indian  Bureau  and  its 
allies ;  and  thus  entertain  the  world  with  the  spectacle  of  total  de- 
pravity finally  triumphant  in  an  "  Indian  ring,"  struggling  no 
longer  against  obstacles  to  its  complete  ascendency,  but  in  the  per- 
fect amplitude  of  its  dominion  and  the  full  blaze  of  its  glory."  Sir, 
let  us  insist  upon  it  that  just  so  fast  as  our  Indian  lands  shall  here- 
after be  disencumbered  of  the  possessory  title  by  which  they  are 
now  held,  they  shall  be  conveyed  to  the  United  States,  and  fall 
under  the  operation  of  our  preemption  and  homestead  laws  ;  and 
that  the  President  and  Senate  have  no  more  power  to  build  rail- 
roads and  make  land  grants  than  has  the  Judiciary  to  enact  laws. 

Mr.  Chairman,  in  addition  to  the  legislative  reforms  I  have  now 
mentioned,  looking  to  the  increase  of  production  and  the  resulting 
improvement  of  our  finances,  the  nation  needs  a  policy  that  would 
more  effectually  develop  our  wonderful  mineral  resources,  and  thus 
augment  the  quantity  of  our  precious  metals.  This  is  absolutely 
necessary  to  an  early  return  to  specie  payments  ;  and  I  have  no 
faith  in  any  financial  theory  which  does  not  look  to  gold  and  silver 
as  the  true  medium  of  exchange  and  standard  of  value.  This  is 
one  of  the  questions  which  have  been  settled  by  the  civilized  and 
commercial  world,  and  therefore  I  need  not  debate  it.  I  believe 
a  return  to  payments  in  coin  is  a  necessity,  and  an  increase  in  the 
product  of  it  must,  of  course,  speed  the  time  when  it  can  be  done 
safely.  The  increase  in  our  productive  wealth,  at  the  lowest  esti- 
mate, is  one  hundred  million  dollars  annually,  while  our  product 
of  gold  and  silver  is  actually  on  the  decline.  The  disproportion  of 
these  metals  to  other  values  and  to  our  commercial  wants,  already 
startling,  is  thus  in  fact  increasing.  How  shall  this  disproportion 
be  reduced?  I  believe  it  may  be  done,  to  some  extent,  by  recon- 
structing our  legislation  on  the  subject  of  our  mineral  lands.  I 
allude  particularly  to  the  clumsy  and  ill-considered  Act  of  July  26, 
1866,  which  was  hurried  through  Congress  under  the  false  title  of 


HOW   TO   RESUME   SPECIE   PAYMENTS.  427 

"  An  act  granting  the  right  of  way  to  ditch  and  canal  owners  over 
the  public  lands  in  the  States  of  California,  Oregon,  and  Nevada." 
The  act  declares  that  the  mineral  lands  of  the  United  States 
shall  be  open  to  exploration  and  occupation  "  subject  to  the  local 
custom  or  rules  of  miners."  These  "  local  rules  "  are  to  govern 
the  miner  in  the  location,  extension,  and  boundary  of  his  claim, 
the  manner  of  improving  and  developing  it,  and  the  survey  also, 
which  is  not  to  be  executed  according  to  the  public  surveys,  with 
reference  to  base  lines,  and  under  the  authority  of  the  United 
States,  but  in  utter  disregard  of  the  same.  The  surveyor-general 
is  to  make  out  a  plat  or  diagram  of  the  claim  and  transmit  it  to 
the  General  Land  Office,  upon  which  it  is  made  the  duty  of  that 
office  to  issue  a  patent  to  the  claimant.  In  case  of  any  conflict 
between  different  claimants  it  must  be  determined  by  the  local 
courts,  without  any  right  of  appeal  to  the  local  land  office,  the 
General  Land  Office,  or  to  any  federal  court.  The  act,  as  I 
stated  on  its  passage,  is  an  absolute  deed  of  quit-claim  on  the  part 
of  the  United  States  of  all  right,  title,  or  interest  in  the  mineral 
lands  of  the  nation,  covering  a  million  square  miles,  and  commits 
them  wholly  to  the  disposition  and  arbitrament  of  the  "  local 
custom  or  rules  of  the  miners." 

The  act  further  gives  to  every  claimant  the  right  to  follow  his 
vein  or  lode,  "  with  its  dips,  angles,  and  variations,  to  any  depth, 
although  it  may  enter  the  land  adjoining,  which  land  adjoining 
shall  be  sold  subject  to  this  condition."  This  law,  so  radically  rev- 
olutionary of  the  well-settled  and  well-understood  policy  of  the 
nation,  rests  upon  the  "  local  custom  or  rules  of  miners."  Sir, 
what  are  these  local  rules  and  customs  ?  I  will  allow  the  State  of 
Nevada  to  answer.  An  official  document,  being  a  Senate  report 
to  the  Legislature  of  that  State  on  the  subject  of  these  local  rules, 
informs  us  that  as  "  to  uniformity  there  is  nothing  approaching  it. 
There  never  was  confusion  worse  confounded.  More  than  two 
hundred  petty  districts  within  the  limits  of  a  single  State,  each 
with  its  self-approved  code  ;  these  codes  differing  not  alone  each 
from  the  other,  but  presenting  numberless  instances  of  contradiction 
in  themselves ;  the  law  of  one  point  is  not  the  law  of  another  five 
miles  distant,  and  a  little  further  on  will  be  a  code  which  is  the  law 
of  neither  of  the  former,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum,  with  the  further 
disturbing  fact  superadded  that  the  written  laws  themselves  may 
be  overrun  by  some  peculiar  custom  which  can  be  found  nowhere 
recorded,  and  the  proof  of  which  will  vary  with  the  volume  of  in- 
terested affidavits  which  may  be  brought  on  either  side  to  establish 


428  HOW   TO   RESUME    SPECIE   PAYMENTS. 

it.  Again,  in  one  district  the  work  required  to  be  done  to  hold  a 
claim  is  nominal,  in  another  exorbitant,  in  another  abolished,  in 
another  adjourned  from  year  to  year.  A  stranger  seeking  to  as- 
certain the  law  is  surprised  to  learn  that  there  is  no  satisfactory 
public  record  to  which  he  can  refer  ;  no  public  officer  to  whom  he 
may  apply  who  is  under  any  bond  or  obligation  to  furnish  him  in- 
formation or  guarantee  its  authenticity.  Often  in  the  new  districts 
he  finds  there  is  not  eyen  the  semblance  of  a  code,  but  a  simple 
resolution  adopting  the  code  of  some  other  district,  which  may  be 
a  hundred  miles  distant." 

The  report  proceeds  to  show  that  these  regulations,  such  as  they 
are,  have  no  permanency.  "  A  miners'  meeting,"  the  committee 
say,  "  adopts  a  code  ;  it  stands  apparently  as  the  law.  Some  time 
after,  on  a  few  days'  notice,  a  corporal's  guard  assembles,  and  on 
simple  motion  radically  changes  the  whole  system  by  which  claims 
may  be  held  in  a  district.  Before  a  man  may  traverse  the  State, 
the  laws  of  a  district  which  by  examination  and  study  he  may 
have  mastered  may  be  swept  away,  and  no  longer  stand  as  the 
laws  which  govern  the  interest  he  may  have  acquired,  and  the 
change  has  been  one  which  by  no  reasonable  diligence  could  he  be 
expected  to  have  knowledge  of." 

This  comes  from  a  great  mining  State,  containing  probably  the 
richest  deposits  of  gold  and  silver  in  the  known  world. 

Sir,  do  we  really  wish  to  found  a  system  of  laws  on  these  "local 
rules,"  enacted  by  a  "  corporal's  guard  "  of  miners,  who  are  here 
to-day  and  gone  to-morrow  ?  What  we  want  is  not  to  recognize 
this  system  of  instability  and  uncertainty,  but  to  sweep  it  away, 
and  usher  in  a  system  of  permanence  and  peace  through  our 
system  of  national  surveys.  We  have  our  General  Land  Office, 
with  its  local  land  offices  in  every  portion  of  the  public  domain. 
Registers  and  receivers  are  to  be  found  in  the  very  midst  of  our 
richest  mining  regions,  charged  with  the  execution  of  our  land 
laws  within  their  respective  districts,  and  in  the  very  vicinity  of 
the  matter  in  dispute  ;  authorized  to  call  parties  before  them,  hear 
their  statements,  take  testimony,  and  determine  the  whole  matter, 
subject  to  the  reasonable  right  of  either  party  to  appeal  to  the 
General  Land  Office  or  to  the  federal  courts.  This  machinery 
is  as  old  as  the  government,  and  perfectly  familiar  to  the  people. 
Why  abandon  it,  and  substitute  the  local  courts,  with  no  right  of 
appeal,  as  if  these  tribunals,  guided  by  the  "  local  rules  "  referred 
to,  were  infallible  ?  Why  pretend  to  nationalize  our  mining  laws, 
when  in  fact  the  Commissioner  of  the  General  Land  Office  and 


HOW   TO   RESUME    SPECIE  PAYMENTS.  429 

the  government  surveyors  are  the  mere  clerks  and  agents  of  the 
communities  whose  "  local  rules"  are  as  unstable  as  water?  Sir, 
the  law  is  not  simply  imperfect,  but  a  legislative  abortion,  worthy 
only  of  the  crooked  and  left-handed  tactics  by  which  it  was  car- 
ried through  Congress. 

I  ought  to  add  that,  in  thus  criticising  the  "  local  custom  "  of 
miners  as  the  basis  of  a  national  policy,  I  am  supported  by  the 
best  informed  men  I  have  met  from  the  mining  States  and  Ter- 
ritories, who  scout  the  idea  of  applying  the  word  "  custom,"  which 
implies  long  usage,  to  these  fleeting  and  ever  varying  regulations  ; 
and  I  take  great  pleasure,  in  this  connection,  in  referring  also  to 
the  authority  of  Mr.  R.  W.  Raymond,  editor  of  the  "  American 
Journal  of  Mining,"  who  was  educated  and  graduated  at  Freiberg, 
Germany,  is  a  mining  engineer,  and  has  now  in  press  an  able 
official  report  as  our  Commissioner  of  Mining  Statistics,  on  our 
mineral  resources,  prepared  by  direction  of  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  after  personal  and  careful  observations  within  the  past 
year. 

I  will  add  further,  that  the  provision  of  this  law  allowing  the 
miner  to  follow  his  vein  on  to  the  lands  of  his  adjoining  neighbor, 
and  undermine  him,  is  wholly  at  war  with  American  ideas.  The 
old  mining  laws  of  Germany  allowed  this,  but  the  Prussian  Code 
of  1867  adopts  the  geodetical  principle  of  ownership  directly  down- 
ward to  the  centre  of  the  earth.  So  do  the  mining  laws  of  France, 
as  those  of  England  have  done  from  the  beginning,  while  the 
famous  mining  codes  of  Spain  and  Mexico  cannot  be  quoted  as 
precedents  for  our  statute.  The  strong  tendency  of  modern  legis- 
lation on  this  subject  is  against  the  policy  on  which  the  United 
States  have  embarked,  and  which  must  inevitably  lead  to  unend- 
ing litigation  and  strife.  That  such  are  its  fruits  in  many  instances 
is  well  known  ;  while  the  departure  from  the  geodetical  system 
not  only  has  no  good  reasons  to  support  it,  but  is  made  in  the  face 
of  reasons  which  render  it,  as  a  remedy,  worse  than  any  disease  it 
could  cure.  It  is  wrong  in  principle.  It  offends  the  first  teachings 
of  mathematics  and  the  plainest  dictates  of  common  sense.  It 
was  framed,  I  believe,  in  the  special  interest  of  lawyers.  The  law 
is  vicious  also  in  exacting  improvements  by  the  claimant  to  the 
value  of  one  thousand  dollars  as  a  condition  of  title.  This  was 
evidently  provided  in  the  interest  of  capitalists,  and  could  not  have 
been  prompted  by  the  rank  and  file  of  our  miners.  Neither  could 
they  ever  have  sanctioned  that  feature  of  the  law  which  requires 
the  miner  to  pay  the  fees  for  surveying  his  claim, #which  are  often 


430  HOW   TO   RESUME   SPECIE   PAYMENTS. 

very  heavy,  and.  frequently  debar  poor  men  from  the  benefits  of 
the  law,  while  in  the  case  of  other  lands  where  the  fees  are  trifling 
the  government  makes  the  survey. 

The  practical  working  of  this  legislation  has  been  such  as  any 
reflecting  man  would  have  anticipated.  During  the  year  1866  our 
product  of  gold  and  silver  amounted  to  seventy-six  millions  of 
dollars.  During  the  past  year  it  was  only  sixty-five  millions,  being 
a  falling  off  of  eleven  millions  of  dollars,  though  the  population 
and  settlement  of  the  mining  regions  has  considerably  increased 
within  the  past  two  years.  That  this  crude  legislation  is  a  partial 
explanation  of  this  decline  in  the  product  of  the  precious  metals 
I  have  no  doubt,  and  that  its  amendment  in  the  points  I  have 
specified  would  add  to  their  future  product  is  equally  evident. 

Mr.  Chairman,  I  now  approach  the  conclusion  of  what  I  desired 
to  say.  The  sum  of  it  is  that  beyond  the  enforcement  of  a  rigid 
economy,  legislation  can  only  lead  the  country  out  of  its  financial 
troubles  by  removing  the  several  obstructions  to  national  progress 
which'  I  have  mentioned.  We  can  abolish  the  curse  of  land  specu- 
lation, and  devote  the  remainder  of  our  public  domain  to  actual 
settlement  and  productive  wealth.  A  bill  providing  for  this  is  now 
pending.  We  can  reform  our  policy  of  railroad  land  grants,  so 
that  it  shall  build  roads,  and  at  the  same  time  populate  and 
improve  the  country  along  their  lines.  We  can  overhaul  our 
disgraceful  Indian  treaty  system,  and  provide  by  law  that  here- 
after whenever  the  title  to  any  of  our  vast  reservations  shall  be 
extinguished  they  shall  fall  under  the  control  of  Congress,  and 
be  dedicated  to  settlement  and  tillage.  And,  finally,  we  can  so 
reconstruct  our  legislation  respecting  our  mineral  lands  as  more 
fully  to  develop  their  vast  wealth,  and  thus  compel  them  to  help 
efface  the  existing  difference  between  our  paper  currency  and 
gold.  These,  sir,  are  the  four  channels  through  which  the  swell- 
ing tide  of  our  wealth  must  pour  in,  and  save  at  once  our  national 
finances  and  our  national  honor.  These  are  the  golden  gates 
through  which  the  Republic  must  pass,  if  it  would  crush  out  the 
insidious  but  steadily  growing  power  of  Aristocracy  and  Land- 
lordism, and  secure  for  itself  an  honorable  name  among  the  nations 
calling  themselves  free.  Through  the  adoption  of  these  practical 
reforms  specie  payments  would  be  resumed,  just  as  soon  as  our 
quickened  industries  and  improved  condition  would  allow.  Un- 
precedented prosperity  and  wealth  would  answer  to  the  roused 
energies  of  the  people  and  the  moral  power  of  equal  rights 
guarded  by  equal  laws.     The  Old  World,  inspired  anew  by  our 


HOW   TO   RESUME    SPECIE   PAYMENTS.  431 

blessed  example  in  checking  the  growth  of  feudalism  on  our  soil, 
would  reinforce  our  grand  army  of  producers  by  her  surplus  mill- 
ions, and  thus,  as  never  before,  add  to  our  wealth  and  power. 

"  See  the  Old  World,"  says  Guyot,  "  exhausted  by  long  culti- 
vation ;  overloaded  with  an  exuberant  population,  full  of  spirit  and 
life,  but  to  whom  severe  labor  hardly  gives  subsistence  ;  devoured 
by  activity,  but  wanting  resources  and  space  to  expand."  On 
the  other  hand  he  describes  America  as  "  glutted  with  its  vege- 
table wealth,  un worked  and  worthless,"  and  argues  that  it  was 
made  for  the  man  of  the  Old  World.  "  Everything  in  nature," 
says  he,  "  points  to  this  great  change.  The  two  worlds  are  look- 
ing face  to  face,  and  are,  as  it  were,  inclining  toward  each  other. 
The  Old  World  bends  toward  the  new,  and  is  ready  to  pour  out 
its  tribes."  And  he  adds  that  "  the  future  prosperity  of  mankind 
may  be  said  to  depend  on  the  union  of  the  two  worlds.  The 
bridals  have  been  solemnized.  We  have  witnessed  the  first  in- 
terview, the  betrothal,  and  the  espousal ;  so  fortunate  for  both.  We 
already  see  enough  to  authorize  us  to  cherish  the  fairest  hopes,  and 
to  expect  with  confidence  their  realization."  Sir,  let  us  legislate 
in  the  lio-lit  of  these  manifest  tokens  of  Divine  Providence.  Let 
us,  by  the  justice  and  humanity  of  our  laws,  invite  Europe  to  our 
shores,  and  to  join  us  in  developing  our  inexhaustible  and  unused 
wealth.  Let  us  reverently  accept  our  part,  and  faithfully  perform 
our  duty,  in  the  grand  march  of  the  world's  civilization  and  prog- 
ress to  which  we  are  summoned.  Our  great  Pacific  Railway  will 
soon  be  completed,  belting  the  continent  with  bars  of  iron,  linking 
in  friendly  embrace  the  two  great  oceans  of  the  world,  and  placing 
the  United  States  on  the  great  highway  from  Europe  to  China. 
Our  position  as  a  free  Republic  commands  the  world,  and  the  hour 
has  struck  for  us  bravely  to  accept  it.  If  we  prove  false  to  our 
grand  trust,  and  in  welcoming  the  Old  World  to  our  shores  we 
welcome  also  its  feudalistic  practices,  its  effete  theories  of  govern- 
ment, our  guilt  can  only  be  measured  by  the  mighty  opportunity 
sinned  away ;  while  the  Old  World,  instead  of  finding  its  new 
birth  and  baptism  on  our  shores,  will  be  buried  in  a  common  grave 
with  ourselves.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  we  are  inflexibly  true 
to  the  rights  of  man,  spurning  all  compacts  with  Serfdom  and 
Caste,  all  the  approaches  of  Aristocracy  and  Privilege,  then  the 
"  contrast  between  the  Old  World  and  the  New  will  soon  be  re- 
duced into  a  grand  and  beautiful  harmony  that  will  embrace  the 
whole  earth." 


THE  OVERSHADOWING  QUESTION. 

HOUSE  OF  EEPKESENTATIVES,  JANUARY  21,  1371. 

[This  elaborate  review  of  our  land  policy,  including  all  its  later  phases  and  most 
startling  developments,  has  been  published  in  large  English  and  German  editions  by 
the  friends  of  Land  and  Labor  Reform.  It  is  believed  that  the  many  facts  it  em- 
bodies in  the  way  of  argument  and  illustration,  and  the  thoroughness  of  its  discus- 
sion of  general  principles,  give  it  both  a  present  practical  interest  and  a  perma- 
nent value.] 

Mr.  Speaker,  —  Nothing  is  more  remarkable  than  the  growing 
tendency  of  legislation  in  this  country  to  lend  itself  to  the  service 
of  capital,  of  great  corporations,  of  monopolies  of  every  sort,  while 
too  often  turning  an  unfriendly  eye  upon  the  people,  and  especially 
upon  the  laboring  poor.  The  cause  of  this  may  fairly  be  traced  to 
the  evil  genius  of  the  times,  which  makes  the  greed  for  sudden 
wealth  a  sort  of  devouring  passion,  and  thus  naturally  clutches  the 
machinery  of  government  in  the  accomplishment  of  its  purposes. 
This  bad  spirit,  which  has  been  steadily  marching  toward  its  alarm- 
ing ascendency  since  the  outbreak  of  the  late  civil  war,  writes  itself 
down  upon  every  phase  of  society  and  life.  It  breeds  political  cor- 
ruption in  the  most  gigantic  and  frightful  forms.  It  whets  the  ap- 
petite for  public  plunder,  and  through  the  aggregation  of  capital 
in  the  hands  of  the  cunning  and  the  unscrupulous,  it  menaces  the 
equal  rights  of  the  people  and  the  well-being  of  society.  So  ma- 
lign a  spirit  must  be  resolutely  confronted.  It  is  no  mere  question 
of  party  politics,  for  it  threatens  the  life  of  all  parties,  and  the  per- 
petuity of  the  government  itself.  It  not  only  invokes  the  saving 
offices  of  the  preacher  and  the  moralist,  but  it  summons  to  new 
duties  and  increased  vigilance  every  man  who  really  concerns  him- 
self for  the  welfare  of  his  country. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  believe  the  evil  to  which  I  refer  finds  some  ex- 
planation in  the  false  teaching  of  political  economy.  According  to 
many  of  the  leading  writers  on  this  science,  its  fundamental  idea 
is  the  creation  and  increase  of  productive  wealth.  If  farming  on 
a  great  scale,  carried  on  with  the  skill  and  appliances  which  con- 
centrated capital  can  command  and  methodize,  will  yield'  greater 
results  than  the  tillage  of  the  soil  in  small  homesteads  and  by 


THE    OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION.  433 

ruder  methods,  then  the  system  of  large  farming  must  be  pre- 
ferred, though  it  deprives  multitudes  of  the  poor  of  all  opportunity 
to  acquire  homes  and  independence,  and  entails  the  appalling  evils 
of  landlordism  and  the  whole  brood  of  mischiefs  with  which  the 
monopoly  of  the  soil  has  scourged  the  people  in  every  age  of  the 
world.  So,  if  manufacturing  on  a  grand  scale,  with  the  perfected 
machinery  and  cheap  labor  which  capital  can  wield,  will  turn  out  a 
larger  product  and  at  lower  rates  than  numerous  small  industries, 
then  such  manufactures  must  be  fostered,  though  the  policy  pau- 
perizes and  brutalizes  thousands  of  human  beings  who  take  rank 
as  "  operatives,"  and  whose  existence  is  thus  made  a  curse  rather 
than  a  blessing.  Sir,  I  protest  against  such  principles  as  both  false 
and  unjust.  "  The  increase  of  wealth,"  says  Sismondi,  "  is  not 
the  end  in  political  economy,  but  its  instrument  in  procuring  the 
happiness  of  all.  It  has  for  its  object  man,  not  wealth.  It  re- 
gards chiefly  the  producer,  and  strives  for  the  welfare  of  the  whole 
people  through  a  just  distribution.  It  is  not  the  object  of  nations 
to  produce  the  greatest  quantity  of  work  at  the  cheapest  rate." 

In  the  light  of  these  broad  and  humane  principles  I  interpret 
the  duty  of  the  government.  Its  mission,  within  the  sphere  of  its 
just  powers,  is  to  protect  labor,  the  source  of  all  wealth,  and  to  seek 
constantly  the  well-being  of  the  millions  who  toil.  Capital  can 
take  care  of  itself.  Always  sagacious,  sleepless,  and  aggressive, 
it  holds  all  the  advantages  in  its  battle  with  labor.  The  balance 
of  power  falls  so  naturally  into  its  hands  that  labor  has  no  oppor- 
tunity to  make  a  just  bargain.  The  labor  market,  it  has  been  well 
observed,  differs  from  every  other.  The  seller  of  every  other 
commodity  has  the  option  to  sell  or  not ;  but  the  commodity  the 
working  man  brings  is  life.  He  must  sell  it  or  die.  Labor,  there- 
fore, should  not  be  regarded  as  merchandise,  to  be  bought  and  sold, 
and  governed  entirely  by  the  law  of  supply  and  demand,  but  as 
capital,  and  its  human  needs  should  always  be  considered.  "  The 
rugged  face  of  society,"  says  a  celebrated  writer,  "  checkered 
with  the  extremes  of  affluence  and  want,  proves  that  some  extraor- 
dinary violence  has  been  committed  upon  it,  and  calls  on  justice 
for  redress.  The  great  mass  of  the  poor  in  all  countries  have  be- 
come an  hereditary  race,  and  it  is  next  to  impossible  for  them  to 
get  out  of  that  state  of  themselves.  It  ought  also  to  be  observed 
that  this  mass  increases  in  all  countries  that  are  called  civilized." 
The  proposition  that  the  rich  are  becoming  richer  in  our  country 
and  the  poor  becoming  poorer  has  been  vehemently  denied ;  but  I 
cannot  doubt  its  truth  for  a  moment.     I  want  no  statistics  to  set- 

28 


434  THE    OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION. 

tie  it,  since  the  unnatural  domination  of  capital  over  labor,  which, 
instead  of  being  repressed  by  legislation  is  systematically  aided  by 
it,  clears  the  question  of  all  doubt.  Our  vitiated  currency  largely 
increases  the  cost  of  the  chief  necessaries  of  life,  and  is  thus  a  heavy 
tax  upon  the  poor.  Our  system  of  national  banking  is  an  organized 
monopoly  in  the  interest  of  capitalists,  demanded  by  no  public 
necessity,  and  rendering  no  substantial  service  in  return  for  the 
burdens  it  imposes  upon  the  people. 

Our  tariff  laws  for  years  past,  while  pretending  to  favor  the 
laborer,  have  been  framed  in  the  interest  of  monopolists.  The 
duty  on  coal,  which  is  a  necessity  of  life,  admits  of  no  defense. 
To  tax  coal  is  to  tax  the  poor  man's  fire,  "  to  tax  the  force  of  the 
steam-engine,  to  starve  the  laborer,  on  whose  strength  we  depend 
for  work."  The  duty  on  leather  has  increased  its  cost  annually 
about  ten  million  dollars,  while  the  consumers  of  boots  and  shoes 
have  had  to  pay  an  increase  of  some  fifteen  million  dollars.  The 
duty  on  lumber  has  largely  increased  its  price,  and  is  wholly  paid 
by  the  consumer.  The  duties  on  wool,  salt,  and  pig  iron,  impose 
heavy  burdens  upon  the  poor,  and,  like  the  other  duties  named, 
can  scarcely  be  defended,  even  granting  the  principle  of  protection 
to  be  sound.  This  legislative  discrimination  in  favor  of  the  richer 
and  more  favored  ranks  in  society,  and  against  the  laboring  and 
producing  masses,  ought  to  cease.  Instead  of  being  loaded  down 
with  burdens  and  exactions  for  the  aggrandizement  of  a  few,  they 
should  share  the  unstinted  favor  of  the  government. 

It  is  estimated  by  writers  on  public  economy  that  four  fifths  of 
the  people  of  a  nation  are  employed  by  agriculture.  Probably 
this  estimate  is  too  large.  But  it  will  be  safe  to  say  that  in  our 
own  country  at  least  one  half  of  those  engaged  in  industrial  occu- 
pations are  employed  in  agricultural  pursuits;  and  they  contribute 
to  the  gross  value  of  national  production  three  billions  two  hun- 
dred and  eighty-two  million  dollars.  The  total  number  of  those  en- 
gaged in  manufactures,  including  railway  service  and  .the  fisheries, 
is  seven  hundred  and  thirty  thousand,  and  they  produce  in  value 
nine  hundred  and  forty  million  and  fifty  thousand  dollars.  The 
estimated  number  of  those  engaged  in  mechanical  pursuits  is  one 
million,  yielding  a  product  of  one  thousand  million  dollars.  If  we 
remember  that  the  gross  annual  product  of  the  country  is  only  six 
billions  eight  hundred  and  twenty-five  million  dollars,  and  that, 
according  to  careful  official  estimates,  only  ten  millions  of  our  pop- 
ulation are  in  receipt  of  income,  or,  in  other  words,  contribute  any- 
thing to  the  increase  of  our  aggregate  wealth,  we  shall  see  what  a 


THE    OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION.  435 

stupendous  service  is  rendered  to  the  country  by  the  great  indus- 
tries I  have  mentioned. 

These  are  the  vital  interests  of  the  nation  ;  and  instead  of  being 
crippled  and  discouraged  by  the  policy  to  which  I  have  referred, 
they  should  be  studiously  fostered  by  just  and  equal  laws.  Under 
the  influence  of  this  policy,  multitudes,  stimulated  by  the  hope  of 
immediate  wealth,  are  abandoning  productive  pursuits,  and  seeking 
employments  ■  connected  with  some  form  of  speculation  or  traffic. 
The  population  of  our  great  cities  and  towns,  instead  of  reinforcing 
the  "  rural  districts,"  is  unduly  increasing  ;  and  so  is  the  number  of 
buildings  devoted  to  banking,  brokerage,  insurance,  and  kindred 
projects.  Not  production,  but  traffic,  is  the  order  of  the  day.  The 
enhanced  cost  of  the  instruments  requisite  for  the  prosecution 
of  industrial  pursuits,  and  the  higher  price  of  fuel,  food,  and  cloth- 
ing, naturally  hinder  the  accumulation  of  capital  sufficient  to 
enable  the  man  of  small  means  to  establish  himself  as  an  inde- 
pendent producer.  This  necessarily  subordinates  labor  more  and 
more  to  capital,  and  concentrates  the  business  of  manufacturing 
and  exchanging  into  large  establishments,  while  working  the  de- 
struction of  thousands  of  smaller  ones. 

Of  course  the  tendency  of  all  this  is  to  render  the  many  depen- 
dent upon  the  few  for  the  means  of  their  livelihood  rather  than 
upon  themselves,  and  "  to  divide  society  into  two  classes :  capital- 
ists who  own  everything,  and  hands  who  own  nothing,  but  depend 
entirely  on  the  capital  class."  That  the  policy  of  the  govern- 
ment, to  a  fearful  extent,  evokes  and  aggravates  these  evils  can 
scarcely  be  questioned ;  and  that  that  policy  results  from  the  ugly 
fact  that  the  laboring  and  producing  classes  are  unrepresented  in 
the  government  save  by  the  non-producers  and  traffickers,  is,  I 
think,  equally  clear.  It  illustrates  the  evils  of  class  legislation, 
and  calls  on  the  people  to  apply  the  remedy.  "  The  unproduc- 
tives,"  says  Commissioner  Welles,  "  being  the  chief  makers  of  the 
laws  and  institutions  for  the  protection  of  labor  and  ingenuity,  the 
increase  of  production,  and  the  exchange  and  transfer  of  property, 
they  shape  all  their  devices  so  cunningly,  and  work  them  so  clev- 
erly, that  they,  the  non-producers,  continue  to  grow  rich  foster 
than  the  producers.  Whoever  at  this  day  watches  the  subject  and 
course  of  legislation,  and  appreciates  the  spirit  of  the  laws,  cannot 
fail  to  perceive  how  more  and  more  the  idea  of  the  transfer  of  the 
surplus  product  of  society,  and  the  creation  of  facilities  for  it, 
available  to  the  cunning  and  the  quick  as  against  the  dull  and 
slow,  has  come  to  pervade  the  whole  fabric  oc  4hat  which  we  call 


486  THE    OVERSHADOWING    QUESTION. 

government ;  and  how  large  a  number  of  the  most  progressive 
minds  of  the  nation  have  been  led  to  accept  as  a  fundamental  truth 
in  political  doctrine,  that  the  best  way  to  take  care  of  the  many  is 
to  commence  by  taking  care  of  the  few ;  that  all  which  is  neces- 
sary to  secure  the  well-being  of  the  workman  is  to  provide  a  satis- 
factory rate  of  profit  for  his  employer."  Sir,  I  rejoice  that  facts 
like  these  are  at  last  making  their  powerful  appeal  to  the  produc- 
tive classes  in  every  section  of  our  country,  and  that  the  working- 
men  of  all  civilized  lands  are  waking  up  to  a  sense  of  their  bond- 
age to  capital.  Were  they  to  continue  much  longer  to  slumber  in 
the  presence  of  the  great  dangers  which  thicken  about  their  future 
and  threaten  to  swallow  them  up,  I  should  despair  of  their  eman- 
cipation. The  organized  struggle  for  their  rights  has  fairly  begun. 
Eight-hour  agitations,  Trades  Unions,  Cooperative  movements,  La- 
bor-reform organizations,  and  the  International  Association  of  the 
Working-men,  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  in  the  maintenance  of 
their  rights,  are  so  many  unmistakable  signs  of  a  better  dispensa- 
tion ;  but  all  these  agencies  will  fail  of  their  purpose,  or  prove  pal- 
liatives at  best,  if  they  do  not  necessitate  and  include  such  organ- 
ized political  action  as  shall  compel  the  governing  power  to  respect 
their  will.  That  this  action  will  make  mistakes,  and  abuse  its 
power  when  obtained,  is  very  probable.  That  it  will  sometimes 
employ  questionable  methods,  and  suffer  the  mischiefs  of  bad  lead- 
ership, may  betaken  for  granted  ;  but  that  in  the  end  it  will  restore 
labor  and  capital  to  their  just  relative  basis  is  as  true  as  democracy 
itself.  The  Labor  Question,  indeed,  is  the  natural  successor  and 
logical  sequence  of  the  Slavery  Question.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  same 
question  in  another  form,  since  the  practical  ownership  of  labor  by 
capital  necessarily  involves  the  ownership  of  the  laborer  himself. 

But  the  subservience  of  our  legislation  to  individual  and  corpo- 
rate wealth,  and  its  practical  unfriendliness  to  the  producing  classes, 
are  most  strikingly  exhibited  in  the  land  policy  of  the  government. 
In  the  endeavor  to  make  this  proposition  clear  I  ask  preliminary 
attention  to  the  following  considerations :  — 

First,  that  it  is  the  unquestionable  duty  of  the  government  to 
make  its  lands  as  productive  as  possible.  It  has  no  right  to  hold 
back  from  settlement  and  tillage  vast  tracts  of  territory  fitted  for 
agriculture,  which  its  own  landless  citizens  desire  to  convert  into 
improved  homesteads  and  make  tributary  to  the  public  wealth. 
Such  a  policy  is  only  less  recreant  than  the  wholesale  destruc- 
tion by  law  of  productive  wealth  already  drawn  from  the  soil  by 
the  hand  of  industry. 


THE   OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION.  437 

Second,  that  in  order  to  secure  homes  for  the  largest  number, 
and  at  the  same  time  reach  the  maximum  of  production,  the  gov- 
ernment should  parcel  out  its  lands  in  homesteads  of  moderate  size, 
and  stimulate  industry  and  thrift  by  making  the  land  owner  and  the 
plough-holder  the  same  person.  "A small  proprietor,"  says  Adam 
Smith,  "  who  knows  every  part  of  his  little  territory,  views  it  with 
all  the  affection  which  property,  especially  small  property,  natur- 
ally inspires,  and  who,  upon  that  account,  takes  pleasure  not  only 
in  cultivating  but  in  adorning  it,  is  generally,  of  all  improvers,  the 
most  industrious,  the  most  intelligent,  and  the  most  successful." 

Third,  that  this  policy  supplies  the  strongest  bond  of  union  be- 
tween the  citizens  and  the  State,  and  is  absolutely  necessary  in  a 
commonwealth.  Feudalism  and  popular  liberty  are  totally  irre- 
concilable. The  strength  of  a  republic  depends  upon  the  virtue 
and  intelligence  of  each  citizen,  and  his  readiness  to  defend  it  in 
time  of  danger  ;  and  these  safeguards  are  best  secured  bv  multi- 
plying  the  number  of  those  who  own  and  till  the  soil,  and  whose 
stake  in  societv  thus  makes  sure  their  allegiance. 

Keeping  in  remembrance  these  fundamental  principles,  which, 
from  the  beginning,  should  have  guided  and  inspired  the  govern- 
ment in  the  management  of  our  vast  public  domain,  let  me  rapidly 
survey  its  actual  policy,  and  thus  exhibit  its  fatal  departure  from 
those  principles.  The  entire  aggregate  of  lands  sold  by  the  gov- 
ernment since  its  formation  is  over  one  hundred  and  sixty  million 
acres.  Of  this  total  amount  I  believe  it  would  be  safe  to  estimate 
that  fully  one  half,  at  the  date  of  its  sale,  passed  into  the  hands  of 
non-resident  owners  for  speculative  pui-poses.  Of  course,  to  what- 
ever extent  the  people's  patrimony  was  thus  locked  up  by  monop- 
olists, productive  wealth  was  hindered,  and  settlers  deprived  of 
homes ;  and  when,  from  time  to  time,  the  lands  were  sold,  the  en- 
hanced price  was  a  cruel  wrong  to  the  poor,  in  which  the  govern- 
ment was  an  equal  partner  with  the  speculator,  but  without  profit. 
More  than  thirty  million  acres  yet  remain  in  the  hands  of  specu- 
lators, being  enough  to  make  one  hundred  and  eighty-seven  thou- 
sand five  hundred  homesteads,  of  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres 
each.  If  these  thirty  millions  had  been  sold  to  actual  settlers,  and 
dedicated  to  the  raising  of  corn,  wheat,  and  other  products,  they 
would  have  been  yielding,  at  the  low  estimate  of  ten  dollars  per 
acre,  an  annual  profit  of  three  hundred  million  dollars,  while  fur- 
nishing homes  for  the  multitudes  who  have  been  driven  to  hunt 
them  in  the  more  distant  frontier,  and  at  the  cost  of  greater  priva- 
tions and  dangers.     This   policy  is   thus  seen  to  be  as  financially 


438  THE    OVERSHADOWING  QUESTION. 

stupid  as  it  is  flagrantly  unjust.  In  California  two  men  own  a 
frontage  on  the  San  Joaquin  River  of  forty  miles  in  extent,  while 
two  other  speculators  have  bought  government  lands  amounting  to 
five  hundred  thousand  acres.  I  give  these  as  specimen  cases.  To 
realize  the  mischief  of  these  monopolies  it  should  be  remembered 
that  the  tracts  thus  appropriated  are  to  be  found  chiefly  in  the 
valleys,  and  fringing  the  bays  and  rivers,  being' the  choice  lands 
of  the  State.  Very  intelligent  gentlemen  in  that  State  assure  me 
that  but  for  this  evil,  reinforced  by  railway  monopoly,  California 
to-day,  instead  of  containing  half  a  million,  would  boast  a  million 
of  people.  The  blasting  effects  of  such  a  policy  are  so  startling 
that  if  written  down  in  figures  they  would  seem  utterly  incredible. 
A  few  capitalists  in  that  State  have  also  purchased  vast  bodies  of 
choice  timbered  land  in  Washington  Territory,  and  are  realizing 
large  fortunes  by  shipping  its  timber  to  San  Francisco  and  else- 
where, while  inflicting  wide-spread  and  irreparable  mischief  upon 
the  Territory. 

Every  gentleman  from  the  States  of  the  Northwest  knows  how 
those  States  have  been  scourged  by  this  policy,  while  in  the  land 
States  of  the  South,  outside  of  the  towns  and  cities,  not  one  mail 
in  ten  is  a  land  owner.  It  has  wrought  upon  the  country  evils 
more  fearful  and  enduring  than  those  of  war,  pestilence,  or  famine  ; 
and  yet,  through  all  the  long  years  of  its  mad  ascendency,  Con- 
gress, by  a  simple  enactment  like  the  bill  now  pending  in  this 
House,  has  had  the  power  to  end  it  forever.  An  act  declaring 
that  no  more  of  the  public  domain  shall  be  sold  except  as  provided 
in  the  preemption  and  homestead  laws,  was  all  that  was  needed 
to  stay  the  ravages  of  this  great  national  curse,  and  is  all  that  is 
now  wanted  to  avert  its  recurrence  in  new  and  still  more  frightful 
forms  in  the  future.  The  working-men  and  pioneer  settlers  of  the 
country  have  repeatedly  petitioned  Congress  to  enact  such  a  law  ; 
but  their  prayer  has  been  denied  in  every  instance,  while  their 
rights  have  been  trampled  down  in  the  interest  of  monopolists, 
whose  wishes  have  been  promptly  coined  into  law.  The  Home- 
stead Act  fails  to  meet  the  case.  The  right  of  the  settler  to  land 
free  of  cost  is  of  far  less  consequence  than  the  reservation  of  the 
public  domain  for  settlers  only,  unobstructed  in  their  right  of  selec- 
tion. The  Homestead  Law  is  only  a  step  in  the  right  direction ; 
for  while  it  offers  homes  to  the  poor,  it  does  this  subject  to  the  pre- 
ferred right  of  the  speculator  to  seize  and  appropriate  the  choice 
lands  in  large  tracts,  and  thus  drive  the  pioneer  further  into  the 
wilderness  and  on  to  less  desirable  lands. 


THE   OVERSHADOWING  QUESTION.  439 

Congress  should  correct  this  great  evil  at  once.  The  President 
emphatically  recommends  it,  and  the  Republican  party  should 
no  longer  hesitate  in  perfecting  its  record,  and  making  good  its 
boasted  friendship  for  the  landless  poor.  The  political  platforms  of 
all  parties,  during  the  past  few  years,  have  taken  the  same  ground  ; 
and  in  this  respect  have  only  reflected  the  earnest  and  almost 
unanimous  wishes  of  the  people. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  pass  to  another  class  of  facts,  and  still  more 
alarming  to  every  man  who  will  give  the  subject  his  attention. 
Congress  has  granted  lands  in  aid  of  railways  and  other  works  of 
internal  improvement  amounting  to  over  two  hundred  million 
acres.  That  these  grants  have  done  good  service  in  the  settle- 
ment and  development  of  the  country  I  do  not  doubt.  This  is 
not  the  point  I  am  now  considering,  and  is  one  aspect  only  of  the 
subject.  The  fact  to  be  emphasized  is,  that  lands  just  about  equal 
in  area  to  the  original  Thirteen  States  of  the  Union  have  been  sur- 
rendered to  corporations,  without  any  conditions  or  restrictions 
securing  the  rights  of  settlers.  They  may  sell  these  lands  for  just 
such  price  as  they  please,  or  hold  them  back  from  sale  altogether 
for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  or  lease  them  for  ninety-nine  years.  The 
public  lands  belong  to  the  people  ;  but  Congress  abdicates  their 
sovereignty  over  a  territory  large  enough  for  an  empire,  in  the 
interest  of  great  corporations  which  thus  install  a  most  gigantic 
and  overshadowing  system  of  feudalism  in  our  Republic,  whose 
founders  believed  they  had  escaped  the  monarchical  principles  of 
the  Old  World. 

The  original  Northern  Pacific  Railroad  Bill  alone  granted  forty- 
seven  million  acres.  The  supplementary  act  of  last  session  in- 
creased the  grant  eleven  millions,  making  a  total  of  fifty-eight  mill- 
ion acres  granted  to  one  great  corporation  ;  and,  as  if  to  demon- 
strate the  complete  subserviency  of  both  branches  of  Congress  to 
the  wishes  of  this  company,  every  proposition  looking  to  the  rights 
of  pioneer  settlers,  or  in  any  way  restrictive  of  the  powers  of  the 
corporation,  was  successively  voted  down  by  strong  majorities. 
Even  the  right  of  other  roads  to  connect  with  this  line  was  impu- 
dently denied.  And  this  nefarious  policy  seems  now  only  fairly 
launched.  The  Senate  at  its  last  session  passed,  in  all,  twenty 
land  grant  bills,  calling  for  the  enormous  aggregate  of  over  one 
hundred  and  sixteen  million  acres,  according  to  careful  estimates 
made  by  the  Commissioner  of  the  General  Land  Office.  Two  of 
these  bills  only  have  gone  through  the  House,  covering  more  than 
fifty-nine  million  acres.    There  are  yet  pending  in  the  Senate  some 


440  THE   OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION. 

thirty-seven  bills,  calling  for  the  further  quantity  of  over  one 
hundred  and  nineteen  million  acres  ;  and  some  of  these  measures 
exhibit  an  audacity  of  recklessness  so  marvelous,  and  a  contempt 
for  the  rights  of  the  people  so  surpassing,  that  I  find  it  difficult  to 
credit  the  legislative  record.  Among  them  is  a  bill  to  encourage 
the  establishment  of  a  line  of  steamships  for  the  conveyance  of 
our  mails  to  European  ports  and  ports  of  India  and  China,  and 
for  promoting  immigration  from  Europe  to  the  Southern  States.  It 
calls  for  more  than  nineteen  million  acres,  for  which  land  scrip  is 
to  be  issued  to  the  different  States  named  in  the  bill  in  certain 
specified  proportions ;  and  fourteen  million  acres  of  the  amount 
granted  are  to  be  gobbled  up  in  the  land  States  of  the  South  from 
the  unsold  public  lands  of  that  section,  which  have  been  so  wisely 
dedicated  to  homestead  settlement  only  by  the  landless  poor,  white 
and  colored. 

A  twin-brother  of  this  project,  and  a  miracle  of  legislative  im- 
pudence, has  been  introduced  in  this  body  at  the  present  session. 
The  corporation  which  it  creates  is  at  once  a  chartered  ocean 
carrier  and  a  chartered  land  proprietor.  The  huge  monopoly  thus 
inaugurated,  while  destroying  individual  commercial  enterprise 
under  the  false  pretense  of  reestablishing  American  commerce, 
would  seize  indefinite  millions  of  acres  of  selected  public  lands  in 
different  sections  of  the  country,  and  hold  them  back  from  settle- 
ment in  aid  of  its  own  greedy  purposes.  The  entire  list  of  land 
grant  bills  pending  in  this  House  is  not  nearly  so  formidable  as 
that  of  the  Senate,  nor  have  I  ascertained  how  much  land  they 
would  require  ;  but  it  would  probably  be  safe  to  estimate  that  the 
bills  yet  pending  in  both  Houses,  if  enacted  into  laws,  would 
absorb  fully  one  hundred  and  fifty  million  acres.  If  wre  remember 
that  our  entire  public  domain,  outside  of  Alaska,  is  only  about  one 
thousand  million  acres,  it  will  not  be  difficult  to  see,  in  the  figures 
I  have  given,  the  extent  of  the  conspiracy  to  rob  the  poor  of  this 
and  coming  generations  of  their  rightful  inheritance  in  the  public 
domain,  and  to  crush  and  subjugate  the  producing  and  laboring 
masses  through  the  power  of  organized  capital.  The  hope  of  the 
country  is  in  the  popular  branch  of  Congress  ;  for  the  Senate, 
judged  by  its  action  at  the  last  session,  seems  entirely  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  people. 

Sir,  this  whole  policy  should  be  abandoned  absolutely ;  or,  if 
continued  under  any  circumstances,  it  should  be  confined  to 
works  of  clearly  national  character  and  importance,  connecting 
important  distant  points,  and  passing  over  a  thinly-settled  region  of 


THE   OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION.  441 

country;  and  the  lands  appropriated  should  not  pass  into  the 
hands  of  any  corporation,  but  be  sold  and  conveyed  directly  to 
actual  settlers,  in  limited  quantities,  and  at  such  moderate  price  as 
to  bring  them  within  the  reach  of  those  who  actually  need  them 
for  homes.  Nothing  short  of  such  restrictions  can  prevent  the 
establishment  of  a  landed  aristocracy  in  our  midst,  worse  even 
than  that  of  the  Russian  and  Hungarian  nobles,  or  the  old  planta- 
tion lords  of  the  South. 

Mr.  Speaker,  the  readiness  of  the  government  to  espouse  the 
cause  of  monopolists  and  corporations  is  not  less  forcibly  illustrated 
in  the  management  of  our  Indian  reservations  during  the  past 
eight  or  nine  years.  These  reservations,  when  the  Indians  desire 
to  part  with  their  title,  -are  no  longer  conveyed  directly  to  the 
United  States,  and  thus  made  subject  to  the  control  of  Congress, 
as  other  public  lands,  but  are  sold  by  treaty  to  railroad  corpora- 
tions, or  to  individual  monopolists,  in  utter  disregard  of  the  rights 
of  settlers  under  the  preemption  and  homestead  laws,  and  with- 
out any  warrant  whatever  in  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States, 
which  gives  to  Congress  the  sole  power  to  dispose  of  and  manage 
the  public  domain. 

As  I  have  shown  on  other  occasions,  millions  of  acres  have  thus 
fallen  into  the  grasp  of  monopolists,  which  should  have  been  the 
free  offering  of  the  government  to  our  homeless  pioneers.  The 
most  remarkable  of  these  transactions  is  the  late  treaty  with  the 
Cherokee  Indians,  by  virtue  of  which  a  territory  fifty  miles  long 
and  twenty-five  miles  wide,  containing  eight  hundred  thousand 
acres,  was  sold  to  James  F.  Joy  for  the  price  of  one  dollar  per  acre. 
The  rio-ht  which  these  Indians  had  in  these  lands  was  that  of  oc- 
cupancy  only,  and  this  they  had  abandoned  and  forfeited  by  the 
attempted  conveyance  of  it  to  the  Confederate  States  in  1861.  The 
lands  were  thenceforward  subject  to  preemption  and  settlement 
precisely  as  all  other  public  lands,  nor  did  the  Cherokees  manifest 
any  disposition  to  occupy  them,  or  any  hostility  to  their  settlement 
by  our  citizens.  They  had  no  desire  whatever  to  convey  the 
lands  to  any  party  save  the  United  States,  and  their  sole  aim  was 
to  recover  the  value  of  their  reservation,  which  they  had  vainly 
sought  to  convey  to  the  public  enemy.  At  the  date  of  this  treaty 
more  than  one  thousand  families  were  on  the  land  as  actual  set- 
tlers, and  there  are  now  thirty-five  hundred,  or  about  eighteen 
thousand  settlers,  occupying  the  counties  of  Bourbon,  Crawford, 
and  Cherokee. 

Two  thirds  of  the  heads  of  these   families  are  honorably  dis- 


442  THE    OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION. 

charged  soldiers,  who  have  in  good  faith  settled  upon  these  lands 
under  the  preemption  and  homestead  laws,  as  they  had  the  right 
to  do,  made  valuable  improvements,  and  expended  their  spare 
means  in  securing  for  themselves  comfortable  homes.  All  these 
people,  save  those  on  the  land  at  the  date  of  this  pretended  treaty, 
are  at  the  mercy  of  Joy.  He  is  their  potentate  and  king.  As  the 
head  of  a  railroad  which  he  is  building  through  their  lands,  and 
in  doing  which  he  affects  to  dread  the  hostility  of  the  settlers,  he 
has  called  on  the  Governor  of  Kansas  for  military  aid  ;  and  federal 
soldiers  are  now  quartered  on  these  settlers,  at  the  instigation  of 
the  Governor,  who  acted  in  the  matter  on  his  own  responsibility, 
and  not  by  authority  of  law.  To  these  wrongs  and  outrages,  per- 
petrated in  the  interest  of  a  single  monopolist  and  his  retainers, 
must  be  added  the  fact  that  the  State  of  Kansas  loses  the  sixteenth 
and  thirty-sixth  sections  of  these  lands,  to  which  she  was  right- 
fully entitled  for  educational  purposes,  while  the  United  States 
lose  the  coal-beds  extending  over  considerable  portions  of  the  ter- 
ritory, and  valued  at  millions  of  dollars.  The  total  value  of  the 
land,  including  these  minerals  and  the  improvements  of  the  set- 
tlers, at  a  moderate  estimate,  may  be  set  down  at  ten  million 
dollars.  So  much  for  one  single  scheme  of  spoliation,  carried  on 
by  the  authority  of  the  government  against  its  own  loyal  citizens, 
whose  hard  toil  is  adding  to  the  public  wealth,  and  whose  valor 
helped  to  save  the  nation  in  its  conflict  with  rebels.  The  treaty 
making  power,  even  granting  the  title  of  the  Indians,  had  no  more 
right  to  convey  these  lands  to  Joy  than  had  Congress  to  usurp  the 
functions  of  the  Executive.  The  whole  proceeding  is  void  under 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and  will  be  so  declared  by 
the  federal  courts,  unless  they  too,  like  the  manipulators  of  this 
treaty,  shall  lend  themselves  to  the  base  uses  of  railroad  corpora- 
tions and  the  Indian  ring.  Sir,  this  transaction  has  no  parallel, 
save  in  another  treaty,  not  yet  ratified,  by  which  a  tract  of  country 
belonging  to  the  Osage  Indians,  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  long 
and  fifty  miles  wide,  and  containing  eight  million  acres,  was  sold 
to  Sturgis,  another  railway  baron,  at  the  rate  of  nineteen  cents 
per  acre,  to  be  paid  in  annual  installments  during  a  period  of 
fifteen  years,  and  in  the  bonds  of  his  company. 

Mr.  Speaker,  equally  startling,  not  to  say  monstrous,  has  been 
the  conduct  of  the  government  in  dealing  with  its  swamp  and 
overflowed  lands.  The  lobby  which  pressed  the  passage  of  the 
Act  of  1850,  granting  such  lands  to  the  States,  urged  that  they 
were  of  little  value,  and  that  the  General  Government  could  not 


THE   OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION.  443 

afford  the  expense  of  reclaiming  them ;  but  the  truth  is  that,  to  a 
very  large  extent,  they  are  the  richest  lands  in  the  nation,  and 
that  the  cost  of  their  reclamation  is  no  greater  than  that  of  other 
agricultural  lands.  "  It  was  likewise  urged  that  the  States  could 
better  be  trusted  with  the  work  than  the  General  Government  ; 
but  time  has  fully  demonstrated  to  the  contrary,  and  very  sadly  to 
the  nation's  cost.  The  well-understood  machinery  of  the  General 
Land  Office,  available  to  individual  energy  and  enterprise,  af- 
forded the  best  and  only  means  of  solving  the  swamp  land  prob- 
lem. No  legislation  has  ever  been  more  disastrous  to  the  country  ; 
and  if  the  Act  of  1850  was  not  framed  in  the  interest  of  organized 
thieving  and  plunder,  then  its  entire  administration  is  so  wholly 
out  of  joint  with  the  law  itself  that  an  honest  man  is  hopelessly 
puzzled  in  the  attempt  to  account  for  it  as  an  accident. 

The  act,  in  failing  to  give  any  definition  of  the  phrase  "  swamp 
and  overflowed  land,"  has  supplied  a  perpetual  temptation  to 
mercenary  men  and  corrupt  officials  to  pervert  it  to  base  ends. 
Instead  of  submitting  the  character  of  the  land  in  dispute  to  the 
register  and  receiver  of  the  local  land  office,  and  investing  them 
with  the  power  to  compel  the  attendance  of  witnesses,  it  leaves 
the  question  to  be  decided  by  the  surveyor-general,  who  has  no 
judicial  power,  and  is  generally  engrossed  and  often  overwhelmed 
with  his  own  proper  duties.  His  office  may  be  hundreds  of  miles 
from  the  lands  in  controversy,  thus  causing  great  and  needless  ex- 
pense to  the  poor  settlers,  who  are  required  to  attend,  with  their 
witnesses,  at  the  hearing,  which  is  frequently  appointed  at  a  season 
of  the  year  rendering  it  a  great  hardship  if  not  an  impossibility  to 
attend. 

Although  the  surveyor-general  is  an  officer  of  the  United  States, 
it  practically  happens  that  local  and  state  influences  completely 
override  the  rights  of  the  General  Government.  The  lands  are 
surveyed  and  their  character  settled  soon  after  some  unusual 
overflow,  or  in  a  season  of  great  rains ;  or  large  bodies  are  declared 
swamp  because  small  portions  of  them  only  are  really  so.  By 
such  methods  the  most  frightful  abuses  are  the  order  of  the 
day,  working  the  most  .  shameful  injustice  to  honest  settlers, 
and  fatally  obstructing  the  settlement  and  development  of  the 
country.  One  hundred  thousand  acres  in  one  land  district, 
and  situate  in  different  localities  near  the  summit  of  the  Sierra 
Nevada  mountains,  some  five  to  six  thousand  feet  above  the  level 
of  the  sea,  are  now  claimed  by  speculators  as  swamp,  while  it  is 
shown  by  the  sworn  statements  of  many  of  the  settlers  on  these 


444  THE    OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION. 

lands  that  they  actually  require  irrigation  to  make  them  desirable 
in  the  raising  of  either  hay  or  grain.  Many  of  these  settlers  who 
have  resided  on  these  mountain  lands  for  years,  and  made  lasting 
improvements  and  pleasant  homes  in  the  most 'perfect  good  faith, 
are  now  brought  face  to  face  with  hostile  claimants  under  the 
Swamp  Land  Act,  who  have  not  the  shadow  of  a  right.  More 
than  sixty  million  acres  in  all  have  been  selected  as  swamp, 
and  over  forty-five  millions  patented,  being  nearly  double  the 
quantity  patented  to  railroads,  and  a  very  large  proportion  of 
which  is  dry  land,  and  among  the  very  best  which  the  govern- 
ment owned.  The  work  of  spoliation  is  still  in  full  blast,  and 
nothing  can  ai'rest  it  but  an  act  of  Congress  so  defining  swamp 
and  overflowed  lands  as  to  make  impossible  the  outrages  to  which 
I  have  referred ;  outrages  so  cunningly  planned  and  so  infernally 
prosecuted  as  to  make  quite  respectable  the  average  performances 
of  professional  pickpockets  and  thieves. 

Mr.  Speaker,  the  grants  made  by  Congress  for  educational  pur- 
poses may  fairly  be  classed  with  the  profligate  legislation  to  which. 
I  have  referred.  Their  aggregate  for  common  schools,  univer- 
sities, and  agricultural  colleges  is  more  than  seventy-eight  million 
acres.  No  conditions  were  prescribed  to  prevent  the  monopoly 
of  this  vast  domain,  or  the  frightful  maladministration  of  it  by  the 
States  which  has  actually  taken  place.  In  some  of  them  the 
school  fund  has  totally  disappeared.  But  by  far  the  worst  of  these 
educational  enactments  is  the  Agricultural  College  Act  of  1862. 
Its  grant  of  thirty  thousand  acres  of  land  for  each  Senator  and 
Representative  in  Congress  absorbs  nearly  ten  millions,  which  are 
handed  over  to  the  cause  of  monopoly.  The  States  having  public 
lands  within  their  borders  will  hold  back  from  sale  the  shares  to 
which  they  are  entitled  in  order  to  a  rise  in  price,  thus  obstructing 
the  settlement  of  the  country  and  placing  burdens  on  the  landless 
poor  ;  while  the  States  having  no  public  lands  are  entitled  to  scrip 
representing  their  proportions,  which  is  thrown  upon  the  market, 
and  has  generally  sold  at  about  fifty  per  cent,  less  than  its  par 
value.  In  some  instances  its  price  has  gone  far  below  this  ;  so 
that  while  it  fails  to  supply  a  fund  with  which  to  build  colleges, 
it  enables  speculators  to  appropriate  great  bodies  of  the  public 
domain  at  a  very  low  rate,  as  if  its  settlement  and  tillage  were  an 
unprofitable  or  an  unmanly  employment,  or  a  barbarian  practice 
which  the  government  should  discourage. 

More  than  eight  hundred  and  eighty-four  thousand  acres  have 
been  located  with  this  scrip  in  the  State  of  California  alone ;  and 


THE    OVERSHADOWING  QUESTION.  44o 

I  remember  that  at  the  last  session  Congress  passed  an  act  to 
perfect  the  title  of  a  noted  monopolist  of  that  State  to  some  thirty 
thousand  acres  so  located,  which  act,  by  way  of  legislative  irony, 
was  entitled,  "  A  bill  amendatory  of  an  act  to  protect  the  rights  of 
settlers  upon  the  public  lands  of  the  United  States."  Of  the 
motives  and  purposes  of  the  men  who  originated  and  carried  the 
Act  of  1862,  I  have  nothing  to  say  ;  but  the  law  itself  is  as  vicious 
and  mischievous  as  if  it  had  been  studiously  planned  as  a  con- 
spiracy against  the  public  welfare.  No  man  can  defend  it ;  and.  it 
ought  to  have  been  entitled,  "  A  bill  to  encourage  the  monopoly  of 
the  nation's  lands,  to  hinder  the  cause  of  productive  wealth,  and 
to  multiply  the  hardships  of  our  pioneers,  under  the  false  pretense 
of  aiding  the  cause  of  general  education."  Kindred,  observations 
apply  to  our  half-breed  Indian  scrip,  which  was  to  be  issued  to 
the  Sioux  Indians  in  person,  but,  by  some  black  art,  is  now  located 
in  violation  of  this  requirement.  The  whole  amount  of  this  scrip 
is  nearly  three  hundred  and  twenty-one  thousand  acres,  while  scrip 
covering  over  seventy-seven  thousand  acres  has  been  issued  to  the 
Chippewa  Indians. 

Our  legislation  respecting  military  bounty  lands  belongs  to  the 
same  class.  More  than  seventy-three  million  acres  in  all  have 
been  appropriated  for  military  and  naval  purposes,  the  effect  of 
which  has  been  far  more  ruinous  to  the  prosperity  of  the  country 
than  beneficial  to  the  soldier  and  seaman.  The  warrants  issued 
for  the  lands  granted  were  to  be  located  only  by  the  soldier.  It 
was  soon  provided,  however,  that  he  might  locate  them  by  an 
agent,  and  finally  they  were  made  assignable.  The  Commissioner 
of  the  General  Land  Office  says  that  of  the  Mexican  War  bountv 
land  warrants  the  records  of  his  office  show  that  not  one  in  five 
hundred,  of  those  issued  and  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  soldiers 
or  their  heirs  has  been  located  by  them,  or  for  their  use  ;  and  he 
estimates  that  not  to  exceed  ten  per  cent,  of  them  have  been  used 
by  preemptors  as  assignees  in  payment  for  actual  settlement,  the 
remainder  having  gone  into  the  clutches  of  the  speculator.  While 
the  soldier  was  cheated  out  of  his  warrant,  or  sold  it  at  a  very 
low  rate,  the  public  domain,  which  should  have  been  free  to  him 
and  to  all  other  poor  men,  has  been  absorbed  by  monopolists,  who 
have  fixed  upon  it  such  tariff  as- they  could  exact  from  those  in 
search  of  homes.  And  yet,  in  the  face  of  these  unfortunate  but 
very  instructive  facts,  persistent  attempts  have  been  made  in  Con- 
gress for  years  past  to  reenact  the  same  mischievous  folly.  Several 
bills  are  now  pending  in  this  House  providing  bounty  lands  for  the 


446  THE   OVERSHADOWING    QUESTION. 

soldiers  of  the  late  civil  war,  one  of  which  calls  for  one  hundred 
and  sixty  acres  for  each  soldier  who  served  twelve  months.  The 
number  of  these,  according  to  careful  official  estimates  of  the  War 
Department,  is  at  least  two  millions,  exclusive  of  deserters,  those 
who  paid  commutation,  and  those  dishonorably  discharged.  Mul- 
tiplying this  by  one  hundred  and  sixty,  we  have  the  aggregate  of 
three  hundred  and  twenty  million  acres  of  land.  It  is  by  far  the 
most  appalling  scheme  of  spoliation  of  which  I  have  any  knowl- 
edge, calling  for  about  one  third  of  the  remaining  public  domain, 
exclusive  of  our  Russian  possessions.  The  warrants  issued  for 
these  lands,  when  thrown  upon  the  market,  would  probably  sell  as 
low  as  a  quarter  of  a  dollar  per  acre,  or  less  ;  a  pitiful  mockery  of 
the  soldier,  while  the  preemption  and  homestead  laws  would  be 
practically  nullified,  and  curses  innumerable  lavished  upon  coming 
generations.  It  would  make  the  plunder  of  the  people  a  national 
institution,  and  breed  an  army  of  vampires  to  prey  upon  their  life. 
Sir,  I  need  hardly  say  that  the  soldier  asks  for  no  such  legislation  ; 
but  he  does  ask  that  the  public  lands  shall  no  longer  be  squandered 
by  speculators,  but  set  apart  for  those  only  who  desire  them  for 
homes. 

Like  considerations  apply,  with  almost  equal  force,  to  another 
pending  measure,  providing  that  every  honorably  discharged  sol- 
dier and  seaman  who  served  ninety  days  in  the  late  Avar  for  the 
Union  may  select  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres  of  the  public  do- 
main, and  receive  a  patent  therefor  at  the  end  of  five  years,  with- 
out settlement.  If  all  of  our  soldiers  and  sailors  should  apply  for 
land,  as  they  would  have  every  reason  to  do,  since  they  could  get 
it  for  the  asking,  the  measure  would  absorb  more  than  three  hun- 
dred and  fifty  million  acres.  If  one  half  only  should  apply,  it 
would  require  every  acre  of  land  which  the  government  could  sur- 
vey within  the  next  twenty-nine  years,  at  the  rate  our  surveys  are 
progressing,  thus  totally  blocking  up  the  general  march  of  civiliza- 
tion and  settlement  now  in  progress,  and  consigning  the  public  do- 
main to  solitude  ;  while  the  soldier,  on  receiving  his  patent,  would 
be  under  no  obligation  to  settle  on  his  land,  and  might  sell  it  to  the 
shark  who  would  be  lying  in  wait  to  take  advantage  of  his  poverty 
in  driving  a  bargain.  The  bounty  which  the  soldier  needs  and 
deserves  should  be  paid  in  money,  and  be  graded  in  amount  ac- 
cording to  his  term  of  service  ;  or  if  land  is  to  be  given  him,  let 
him  have  it  under  the  Homestead  Law,  with  the  discrimination  in 
his  favor  that  his  term  of  service,  whether  long  or  short,  shall  be 
counted  as  part  of  the  five  years'  settlement  now  prescribed  by 
law. 


THE   OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION.  447 

But  the  government  has  not  only  thus  favored  the  squandering 

of  the  people's  rightful  patrimony,  but  in  some  instances  it  has 
shown  itself  positively  unfriendly  to  the  producing  classes,  and  es- 
pecially to  that  grand  army  of  occupation,  the  pioneer  settlers.  I 
give  two  notable  examples.  In  the  year  1864  Congress  granted 
to  the  State  of  California  the  famous  Yosemite  Valley,  in  perpetual 
reservation  as  a  pleasure-ground  and  spectacle  of  wonder.  But  it 
turned  out  that,  prior  to  the  grant,  Hutchings  and  Lamon,  two  en- 
terprising settlers,  had  selected  homes  in  the  valley  under  the  pre- 
emption laws,  built  their  cabins,  planted  orchards  and  vineyards, 
and  expended  some  thousands  of  dollars  in  making  themselves 
comfortable,  while  braving  great  hardships  and  privations  in  this 
remote  and  inaccessible  region.  California,  however,  having  ac- 
cepted the  grant,  caused  an  ejectment  to  be  brought  against  these 
settlers,  who  appealed  for  protection  to  the  Legislature  ;  and  an 
act  was  passed,  subject  to  its  ratification  by  Congress,  reserving  to 
each  of  them  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres,  including  their  improve- 
ments, and  reserving  to  the  State  the  right  to  construct  bridges, 
avenues,  and  paths  over  the  preemptions,  so  that  the  public  use  of 
the  valley  could  not  be  obstructed. 

Early  in  the  present  Congress  a  bill  was  introduced  in  this  body 
confirming  the  act  referred  to,  and  thus  redeeming  the  pledge  of 
the  nation,  embodied  in  the  preemption  law,  that  their  homes 
should  be  secured  to  them  on  compliance  with  its  prescribed  con- 
ditions. They  were  the  only  preemptors  in  the  valley,  and  the  sim- 
ple, naked  question  presented  by  the  bill,  was  whether  the  govern- 
ment would  maintain  its  plighted  faith.  The  nation  recognizes  the 
sacredness  of  contracts.  It  will  not  allow  any  law  to  be  passed 
impairing  their  obligation,  and  as  between  individuals  compels 
their  performance.  Should  it  then  deliberately  violate  its  own 
contract  with  these  pioneers,  and  thus  proclaim  its  faithlessness  to 
all  settlers  ?  The  House  of  Representatives,  on  the  second  day  of 
last  July,  answered  this  question  in  the  affirmative.  By  its  recorded 
vote  of  one  hundred  and  seven  against  thirty-one,  it  declared  that 
Hutchings  and  Lamon  should  be  driven  from  their  homes  ;  and  I 
must  say  that  I  know  of  no  vote  since  the  passage  of  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Act  of  1850  which  calls  more  loudly  for  general  and  unhesi- 
tating reprobation.  It  insults  our  hardy  pioneers,  who  have  en- 
counted  wild  beasts  and  the  scalping  knife  of  the  Indian  in  explor- 
ing our  distant  borders  and  extending  the  march  of  civilization,  bv 
telling  them  they  are  outlaws  on  the  public  domain. 

It  was  said  in  the  debate  on  this  bill  that  these  settlers  might 


448  THE   OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION. 

start  "  lager  saloons,  cornfields,  and  cow-yards  "  on  their  premises  ; 
but  surely  that  fact,  should  it  happen,  ought  not  to  deprive  them 
of  their  rights  as  settlers,  nor  could  it  possibly  interfere  with  the 
public  use  of  a  valley  containing  over  thirty-six  thousand  acres. 
Indeed,  I  think  it  might  have  been  far  wiser  to  carve  it  up  into 
small  homesteads,  occupied  by  happy  families,  decorated  by  or- 
chards, gardens,  and  meadows,  with  a  neat  little  post-town  in  their 
midst,  and  churches  and  school-houses  crowning  all ;  but  in  any 
event  the  claims  of  these  settlers  should  have  been  held  sacred. 
The  marvelous  beauty  of  this  valley  can  have  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  the  right  of  preemption  as  a  legal  principle,  and  is  evi- 
dently used  as  a  mere  pretext.  The  truth  is,  as  I  have  reason  to 
believe,  that  wealthy  capitalists  from  California,  whose  power  is 
sometimes  felt  in  Washington,  have  their  eye  on  this  valley.  They 
are  already  a  corporation  in  embryo  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining 
a  long  lease  of  it,  and  building  a  magnificent  hotel  within  its  walls  : 
and  a  part  of  their  enterprise^will  probably  be  the  construction  of 
a  railroad,  with  government  aid,  as  near  to  the  valley  as  practi- 
cable. Their  animating  purpose  is  to  enrich  themselves  by  levying 
tribute  upon  gentlemen  of  elegant  leisure,  rich  tourists,  and  such 
others  as  can  afford  to  endure  their  exactions,  while  such  plebeians 
as  Hutchings  and  Lamon  will  have  to  hunt  other  and  less  aristo- 
cratic pleasure-grounds.  But  whether  I  am  right  or  not  in  these 
opinions,  the  defeat  of  the  bill  referred  to  was  a  flagrant  wrong  to 
these  settlers.  It  was  the  complete  miscarriage  of  justice.  It  can 
scarcely  be  necessary  to  add  that  the  same  measure  had  been  twice 
reported  adversely  in  the  Senate,  where  it  found  even  less  favor 
than  in  the  House. 

But  I  am  very  sorry  to  say,  Mr.  Speaker,  that  the  Federal  Ju- 
diciary has  at  last  made  common  cause  with  Congress  against  the 
rights  of  our  pioneer  settlers.  The  case  to  which  I  now  refer 
arose  between  Whitney,  a  preemptor  of  a  quarter  section  of  land 
included  in  the  famous  Spanish  grant  known  as  the  Soscol  Ranch, 
in  California,  aiid  which  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States 
had  declared  invalid,  and  General  Frisbie,  a  noted  monopolist,  who 
claimed  title  to  a  portion  of  said  ranch,  including  Whitney's  claim, 
under  an  act  of  Congress  passed  chiefly  through  his  agency.  The 
local  land  office  in  California  decided  the  case  in  favor  of  Frisbie  ; 
but  on  appeal  to  the  General  Land  Office  Whitney's  preemption 
was  sustained.  Frisbie  then  prevailed  on  the  Secretary  of  the 
Interior  to  ask  the  opinion  of  the  Attorney  General  on  the  cpues- 
tion  of  law  involved,  wrhich  was  the  right  of  preemption,  the  facts 


THE   OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION.  440 

being  admitted.  The  Attorney  General  gave  his  opinion  to  the  ef- 
fect that  a  settler  under  the  preemption  laws  acquires  no  vested  in- 
terest in  the  land  he  occupies  by  virtue  of  his  settlement,  and  can 
acquire  no  such  interest  till  he  has  taken  all  the  legal  steps  neces- 
sary to  perfect  an  entrance  in  the  land  office,  being  in  the  mean 
time  a  mere  tenant  at  will,  who  may  be  ejected  by  the  government 
at  any  moment  in  favor  of  another  party.  This  opinion  beino-  ac- 
cepted as  law  by  the  Interior  Department,  Whitney  prosecuted  his 
claim  against  Frisbie  in  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  District  of  Col- 
umbia, which  sustained  his  preemption  as  valid.  Frisbie  thereupon 
appealed  the  case  to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States, 
which,  in  March  last,  decided  it  in  his  favor,  fully  affirming  the 
doctrine  of  the  Attorney  General,  that  settlers  on  the  public- 
lands  under  the  preemption  laws  have  no  rights  which  the  gov- 
ernment is  bound  to  respect. 

Sir,  a  bad  law  may  sometimes  be  explained  on  the  ground  of 
haste,  or  surprise  ;  but  here  we  have  the  deliberate  judgment  of 
the  highest  court  in  the  Union  that  where  the  preemption  law  in- 
cites settlers  on  to  the  public  lands,  and  offers  them  homes  on  cer- 
tain prescribed  conditions  with  which  they  are  willing  and  anxious 
to  comply,  the  government  may  write  itself  down  a  liar  before  the 
nation  by  robbing  them  of  the  lands  they  have  selected,  and  the 
money  and  labor  expended  upon  them  in  good  faith.  And  this  is 
the  unanimous  opinion  of  the  court.  It  totally  ignores  the  strong 
and  pointed  authorities  which  the  whole  country  has  understood 
to  have  settled  the  law  to  the  contrary,  and  the  whole  policy  of 
the  government  during  the  past  forty  years  ;  and  whoever  will 
read  it  carefully  in  the  light  of  the  facts  of  the  case  will  find  that 
it  elaborately  pettifogs  the  cause  of  the  monopolist  from  the  begin- 
ning to  the  end. 

Sir,  I  brand  it  as  the  Dred  Scott  decision  of  the  American  pio- 
neer. It  threatens  the  complete  overthrow  of  the  land  policy  of 
the  government,  and  the  establishment  of  the  vicious  principle 
that  settlers  on  the  public  domain  are  mere  trespassers,  with  whom 
no  terms  are  to  be  kept.  It  arrays  the  government  against  the 
poor  man  in  his  hard  struggle  for  a  home,  and  makes  it  the  ally  of 
monopolists,  who  have  at  last  heard  their  triumph  proclaimed  from 
the  supreme  bench.  It  strikes  at  the  nation's  well-being,  if  not 
its  life ;  for  we  are  largely  indebted  to  the  wisdom  and  justice  of 
our  policy,  as  embodied  in  the  preemption  and  homestead  laws,  foi 
our  marvelous  progress  as  a  people,  and  for  the  place  we  hold 
amoncr  the  other  nations  of  the  world.    It  signalizes  the  ugly  epoch 

29 


450  THE   OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION. 

we  have  reached  in  the  domination  of  capital  over  labor,  and  the 
danger  which  menaces  the  very  principle  of  Democracy.  It  strikes 
at  the  honor  of  the  nation,  which,  as  I  have  said  elsewhere,  can  as 
innocently  repudiate  the  debt  it  incurred  in  saving  its  own  life  as 
to  violate  its  plighted  faith  to  our  pioneers  that  they  shall  have 
homes  on  the  public  domain  on  conditions  which  are  honestly  ac- 
cepted and  complied  with  on  their  part.  They  should  be  the  favor- 
ites of  the  nation.  The  Preemption  Law  should  not  be  construed 
strictly  against  them,  like  a  penal  statute,  but  liberally,  in  further- 
ance of  the  great  and  manifest  object.  "  The  pioneer,"  says  the 
President  in  his  late  message,  "  who  incurs  the  dangers  and  priva- 
tions of  a  frontier  life,  and  thus  aids  in  laying  the  foundation  of 
new  commonwealths,  renders  a  signal  service  to  his  country,  and 
is  entitled  to  its  special  favor  and  protection." 

Mr.  Speaker,  a  distinguished  Englishman  and  well-known  friend 
of  English  working-men  who  has  recently  been  among  us,  took  oc- 
casion to  exhort  the  working-men  of  our  own  country  against  the 
spirit  of  discontent,  pointing  them  to  our  cheap  lands,  our  fair 
wages  for  work,  and  the  favorable  condition  of  our  poorer  classes 
generally,  while  deprecating  any  special  effort  looking  to  their 
future  welfare.  Sir,  if  he  had  duly  considered  the  facts  I  have 
presented  I  am  sure  he  would  have  tendered  no  such  counsel.  In- 
structed by  the  state  of  affairs  in  his  own  country,  he  would  have 
warned  us  against  the  very  evils  which  make  the  social  condition 
of  England  so  frightful  a  problem,  and  which  can  only  be  averted 
here  by  sounding  the  cry  of  danger,  and  laying  hold  of  the  means 
of  escape  before  it  shall  be  too  late.  True,  the  condition  of  the 
working  people  of  England  and  the  United  States  is  at  present 
very  different.  The  old  feudal  system  of  William  the  Conqueror 
crushes  England  to-day.  The  military  features  of  the  system, 
with  the  royal  prerogative,  have  disappeared,  and  three  fourths  of 
her  people  are  not  now  slaves,  as  was  the  fact  a  few  centuries  ago ; 
but  the  principle  of  land  monopoly  inaugurated  by  that  system  is 
more  powerful  for  evil  now  than  ever  before. 

About  the  middle  of  the  last  century  there  were  three  hundred 
and  seventy-four  thousand  landholders  in  England,  while  now  she 
has  only  thirty  thousand.  The  number  is  still  decreasing.  One 
half  of  her  soil  is  owned  by  one  hundred  and  fifty  persons,  and 
nineteen  and  a  half  millions  of  acres  in  Scotland  are  owned  by 
twelve  proprietors.  These  land  owners  have  very  properly  been 
styled  sovereign.  They  may  consign  a  whole  county  to  the  soli- 
tude of  a  deer  forest,  or  clear  a  large  territory  of  its  population  as 


THE   OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION.  451 

they  would  exterminate  vermin.  Fifteen  thousand  people,  without 
any  respect  to  age,  sex,  or  condition,  and  for  no  fault  of  their  own, 
were  turned  out  of  the  Sutherland  estates  in  the  early  part  of  the 
present  century.  These  things  could  not  have  been  done  under 
the  old  feudal  system.  Under  that  system  the  vassal,  in  return 
for  his  services,  had  lands  allotted  to  him.  If  the  lord  had  rights, 
they  involved  some  corresponding  duties  to  the  slave  ;  but  now  the 
English  landholder  is  more  than  a  feudal  lord,  while  the  poor  have 
no  feudal  rights.  The  extinction  of  small  freeholders,  and  the  ab- 
sorption of  the  lands  by  a  few,  introduced  pauperism,  which  has 
steadily  grown  with  the  growth  of  large  estates.  The  poor  have 
thus  been  driven  into  the  towns,  and  compelled  to  live  in  hovels, 
dens,  and  garrets,  just  as  the  same  consequences  followed  in  re- 
publican Rome  when  the  patricians  seized  the  lands  of  the  small 
freeholders  and  drove  their  occupants  into  the  capital. 

Under  the  feudal  system  the  lands  supported  the  poor  and  de- 
frayed all  the  expenses  of  the  state ;  but  now,  while  land  in  Eng- 
land is  constantly  rising  in  value,  and  its  tillage  is  so  greatly  aided 
by  steam-ploughs,  threshing-machines,  reapers,  improved  live  stock, 
and  increased  knowledge  of  the  capabilities  of  the  soil,  the  land 
owner  escapes  the  burdens  of  taxation  and  imposes  them  upon  the 
poor,  because  he  is  the  maker  of  the  laws.  This  is  a  sad  picture, 
and  it  forcibly  illustrates  what  the  Duke  of  Argyle  says  of  the  an- 
tagonism between  natural  law  and  legislation.  No  one  can  fail  to 
agree  with  him  when  he  says  that  this  antagonism  "  must  be  elim- 
inated if  legislation  is  ever  to  be  attended  with  permanent  suc- 
cess ;  "  nor  can  any  thoughtful  Englishman  disregard  his  warning 
when  he  declares  that  "  institutions  upheld  and  cherished  against 
justice,  and  humanity,  and  conscience,  have  yielded  only  to  the 
scourge  of  war."  The  salvation  of  England  lies  in  the  complete 
overthrow  of  her  system  of  landed  property,  which  has  feudalized 
labor  as  well  as  land,  and  in  the  restoration  to  the  poor  of  their 
rightful  inheritance  in  the  soil.  This  would  solve  the  problem  of 
her  pauper  labor,  and  open  the  way  to  the  solution  of  every  other 
vital  question.  By  diversifying  the  pursuits  of  her  people,  and 
giving  homes  to  multitudes  who  are  dragging  out  wretched  lives 
under  her  factory  system,  or  driven  into  her  almshouses  and 
prisons,  it  would  radically  reconstruct  the  whole  fabric  of  her  social 
life.  A  disenthralled  country  would  bear  witness  to  the  saying  of 
St.  Pierre,  that  "  It  is  not  upon  the  face  of  vast  dominions,  but  in 
the  bosom  of  industry,  that  the  Father  of  mankind  pours  out  the 
precious  fruits  of  the  earth." 


452  THE    OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION. 

But  is  the  resemblance  of  our  own  country  to  England  so  faint 
as  to  awaken  no  concern  for  our  future  ?  Have  we  not  borrowed 
from  her  very  many  of  her  feudalistic  ideas  and  practices  ?  Are 
we  not  following  in  her  track  "with  a  step  as  steady  as  time?  " 
Our  country,  indeed,  is  relatively  new  ;  but  for  that  very  reason, 
ideas  and  systems,  whether  wholesome  or  vicious,  ripen  swiftly  in 
this  age  of  marvelous  activities.  Let  me  take  the  State  of  Cali- 
fornia as  an  example.  She  is  cursed  by  a  system  of  Spanish  grants, 
covering  her  best  lands,  and  handing  them  over  in  great  bodies  to 
individual  monopolists  ;  and  this  evil  is  greatly  aggravated  bv  the 
absorption  into  these  monopolies  of  large  tracts  of  government 
lands  contiguous  to  them,  through  the  shocking  maladministration 
of  federal  and  state  officials.  Then  there  are  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  acres  of  government  lands  bought  by  a  few  speculators, 
largely  with  college  and  Indian  scrip  at  low  rates,  and  thus  held 
back  from  the  landless  poor,  save  upon  such  terms  as  these  specu- 
lators may  see  fit  to  exact. 

Besides  all  this,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  acres  have  passed  into 
the  custody  of  the  State,  and  thence  into  the  clutches  of  monopo- 
lists, through  a  monstrous  perversion  of  the  swamp  land  acts  of 
Congress,  as  already  shown  ;  thus  inflicting  upon  the  country  and 
our  pioneer  settlers  a  stupendous  wrong.  The  monopoly  of  Cali- 
fornia lands  by  her  railroad  corporations  must  not  be  omitted  from 
this  sad  inventory,  nor  should  it  be  forgotten  that  the  power  of 
this  organized  landlordism  must  inevitably  exert  a  shaping  in- 
fluence over  her  judiciary,  whose  rulings  have  so  often  been  most 
unfriendly  to  the  poor.  If  to  all  this  we  add  that  the  great  land- 
holders of  the  State,  the  Bank  of  California,  her  steamship  com- 
panies, and  her  railroad  and  mining  corporations,  find  it  to  their 
interest  to  stand  by  one  another,  and  are  to  a  considerable  extent 
interested  in  common  in  the  business  of  each  other,  we  shall  read- 
ily see  that  the  maxim  that  "  Capital  owns  labor"  has  a  tolerably 
fair  prospect  of  being  verified  in  that  State.  To  a  very  alarming- 
extent  the  capital  of  the  State  holds  the  labor  of  the  State  in  its 
power  ;  and  that  it  should  seek  still  further  to  starve  and  degrade 
labor  by  coolie  importations  is  the  most  natural  thing  conceivable. 
It  wants  a  base  and  background  for  its  growing  domination,  and 
longs  to  liken  our  country  more  and  more  to  those  of  the  Old 
World,  in  which  not,  one  man  in  five  hundred  is  a  land  owner,  and 
"  wages  slavery  "  bears  almost  as  grievously  upon  the  poor  as 
chattel  slavery  once  did  upon  its  victims  in  the  South. 

The  coolie  traffic  has  its  genesis  in  the  aggregation  of  capital  in 


THE    OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION.  453 

the  hands  of  a  few  men,  and  especially  in  the  monopoly  of  the  soil  ; 
but  while  it  should  be  prohibited  by  strong  statutes,  the  real  rem- 
edy for  it  must  be  sought  in  the  removal  of  the  causes  which  pro- 
duce it.  We  must  go  to  the  root  of  the  matter.  I  have  spoken 
of  California ;  but  land  monopoly  in  other  States  has  become  al- 
most equally  alarming.  In  all  of  them  the  spirit  of  monopoly  is 
rampant,  while  the  government,  putting  on  the  temper  of  the  times, 
has  become  its  representative  and  most  powerful  auxiliary.  Feu- 
dalism, it  is  true,  in  its  primitive  form,  has  no  existence  among  us  ; 
but  our  great  and  rapidly  multiplying  corporations  threaten  us 
with  a  more  fearful  feudalization  than  that  which  cursed  England 
five  centuries  ago.  It  brings  the  laboring  classes  more  and  more 
within  its  power,  creating  a  subdued  and  subordinated  class  of  pro- 
letariats like  the  Chinese,  or  an  aggressive  and  imbittered  one  like 
the  English  working  people.  The  motives  for  cultivating  the  soil 
here  in  large  tracts,  and  according  to  the  principles  of  scientific 
agriculture,  are  quite  as  strong  as  in  any  other  country,  while  the 
effort  to  capitalize  our  lands  as  naturally  involves  the  spirit  of  as- 
sociation, through  which  a  few  men  of  administrative  talent  con- 
stantly enlarge  their  estates,  and  drive  the  poorer  and  less  provi- 
dent classes  to  the  wall. 

The  effect  of  labor-saving  machinery  and  steam  upon  the  in- 
crease of  production  and  the  concentration  of  capital  must  be 
quite  as  potent  here  as  in  the  countries  of  Europe  in  subjecting 
the  laboring  masses  to  the  cunning  and  cupidity  of  the  "  captains 
of  industry,"  as  they  are  sometimes  styled,  who  control  our  rail- 
roads, telegraphs,  banking  institutions,  and  land  grants,  being  the 
monopolizers  of  transportation  and  controllers  of  credit  and  ex- 
change. These  men  are  not  only  the  captains  of  industry,  but,  as 
I  have  shown,  the  captains  of  legislation  also  ;  and  their  dominat- 
ing idea  is  legislation  for  property  primarily,  and  for  man  second- 
arily. They  dictate  our  laws  from  the  lobby,  suborn  the  judiciary 
into  their  service,  and  poison  the  fountains  of  public  opinion. 
Under  their  sway  wealth  is  more  and  more  centralized,  and  the 
very  life  of  our  free  system  of  government  is  threatened. 

The  remedy  for  these  evils,  Mr.  Speaker,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
thorough  reconstruction  of  our  land  policy.  This  is  the  question 
of  questions.  It  underlies  every  other,  and  no  party  deserves  to 
live  that  will  not  face  it.  The  questions  of  the  tariff,  of  finance, 
of  internal  taxation,  of  civil  service  reform,  and  of  national  edu- 
cation are  simply  side  issues.  The  just  solution  of  all  of  them 
will  be  comparatively  easy,  if  aided  by  a  wise  settlement  of  the 


454  THE   OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION. 

land  question.  The  labor  movement  itself  will  prove  an  unmean- 
ing wrangle,  if  it  does  not  plant  itself  upon  this  as  its- central  idea, 
and  press  its  demands  for  other  reforms  through  its  adjustment. 
In  pointing  out  the  evils  of  our  present  policy  I  have  indicated 
some  of  the  reforms  which  these  evils  make  immediately  neces- 
sary ;  but  we  have  gone  so  far  in  the  direction  of  feudalism,  and 
are  still  drifting  toward  it  at  so  fearful  a  rate,  that  the  right  of  pri- 
vate property  in  land  may  itself  ere  long  have  to  be  reconsidered. 
.  This  right,  in  its  unlimited  sense,  is  disowned  by  three  fourths  of 
the  human  race,  including  the  ablest  thinkers  of  the  present  gen- 
eration. It  is  at  war  with  the  great  primal  truths  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  and  can  no  more  be  defended  than  the  abso- 
lute right  of  private  property  in  the  sunlight  and  the  air.  I  do  not 
propose,  or  even  suggest,  any  scheme  of  agrarianism  ;  but  that  this 
asserted  right,  according  to  some  just  method  yet  to  be  applied, 
should  be  subordinated  to  the  rights  of  man  and  the  public  good  is 
as  true  as  any  of  our  fundamental  political  maxims. 

Sir,  this  question  reaches  down  to  the  very  bed-rock  of  democ- 
racy ;  for  if  a  few  individuals  or  chartered  corporations  may  ab- 
solutely own  millions  of  acres,  they  may  own  the  whole  of  a  State, 
or  a  continent,  and  thus  practically  enslave  its  people.  The  unre- 
stricted monopoly  of  the  soil  thus  logically  justifies  a  land-owning 
despotism,  and  is  just  as  repugnant  to  republican  government  as 
slavery  is  to  freedom.  The  landholders  of  a  country  govern  it,  and 
therefore  the  struggle  for  equal  rights,  whether  in  this  country  or 
in  Europe,  must  resolutely  uphold  the  natural  right  of  the  people 
to  an  inheritance  in  the  soil.  Thus  only  can  they  most  certainly 
work  out  the  overthrow  of  every  form  of  aristocratic  and  dynastic 
rule,  and  institute  a  real  democracy  in  their  stead.  Every  house- 
hold is  a  little  commonwealth,  and  the  aggregate  of  these  makes 
the  nation.  The  family  is  the  peculiar  institution  of  the  race,  the 
most  blessed  creation  of  God  ;  and  nations  are  prosperous  and 
strong  in  the  exact  proportion  in  which  it  is  protected  and  cher- 
ished. It  is  the  foundation  of  society,  the  parent  and  master  of 
the  State.  The  home  embodies  all  that  is  best  in  our  civilization, 
all  that  is  most  precious  and  sacred  in  the  idea  of  country,  of 
liberty,  and  of  life.  To  guard  and  foster  it  should  be  the  grand  pur- 
pose of  our  laws  ;  and  to  fail  in  this  duty,  or  to  throw  obstacles  in 
the  way  of  the  multiplication  and  security  of  well-ordered  homes, 
is  to  strike  at  the  life  of  free  institutions. 

The  land  question  then,  I  repeat,  is  the  great  living  issue  and 
overshadowing  question  of  American  politics.     No  other  problem 


THE    OVERSHADOWING   QUESTION.  455 

goes  down  so  deep,  or  lies  so  near  the  heart  of  the  people.  Even 
the  grand  cause  of  woman's  enfranchisement  is  fairly  included  in 
it,  in  so  far  as  the  ballot  is  powerless  to  save  in  the  hands  of  land- 
less citizens ;  while  that  cause  must  find  its  chief  support  in  the 
laboring  masses  whose  battle-cry  is  "  Homes  for  all,"  and  who  will 
welcome  the  heart  and  brain  of  woman  as  their  natural  and  most 
powerful  allies. 


THE   RAILWAY   POWER. 

HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES,    FEBRUARY  21,  1871.1 

[The  views  here  presented  of  the  Railway  as  a  political  power,  will  be  found  sugges- 
tive, while  the  cry  of  danger  is  sounded  none  too  soon.  It  is  to  be  hoped  the  people 
will  heed  it  in  season.] 

Me.  Speaker, — The  action  of  this  House  on  the  South  Pacific 
Railway  Bill  is  quite  remarkable,  and  fitly  exemplifies  the  spirit 
and  policy  of  what  may  properly  be  called  the  railway  power  of  the 
United  States.  For  some  time  past  the  opinion  seems  to  have  been 
gaining  ground,  both  in  Congress  and  out,  that  our*  land  grant 
policy  has  been  very  decidedly  checked,  if  not  finally  overthrown. 
The  indications  of  this  have  been  thought  palpable  enough.  The 
huge  pile  of  Senate  bills  on  the  Speaker's  table  has  been  allowed 
to  slumber,  and  the  House  has  manifested  a  sort  of  instinctive 
dread  of  the  motion  to  take  them  up,  on  account  of  the  immense 
quantities  of  land  which  they  propose  to  hand  over  to  monopolies. 

This  body,  at  the  last  session,  unanimously  passed  a  resolution 
condemning  all  further  grants  of  land  in  aid  of  railroads,  and  the 
Republican  party,  recognizing  the  popular  hostility  to  these  grants, 
paraded  this  resolution  in  a  campaign  document  last  year  as  evi- 
dence of  its  soundness  on  the  question  of  friendliness  to  our  pioneer 
settlers.  This  House  also,  again  and  again,  has  declared  that  if 
further  grants  are  to  be  made,  the  lands  granted  should  be  sold 
only  to  actual  settlers,  in  quantities  not  greater  than  one  quarter 
section  to  a  single  purchaser,  and  for  such  reasonable  price  as  to 
brino-  them  within  the  reach  of  those  who  actually  need  them  for 
homes,  thus  accepting  the  obvious  principle  that  the  building  of 
the  road  and  the  settlement  and  tillage  of  the  land  along  its  border 
are  mutual  helps  to  each  other. 

The  President,  in  his  last  annual  message,  favors  this  policy,  and 
gives  us  his  opinion  against  the  expediency  or  necessity  of  further 
grants  of  lands  for  railroad  purposes,  and  in  favor  of  reserving  the 
whole  of  our  remaining  public  domain  for  actual  settlers  under  the 
preemption  and  homestead  laws.  To  these  tokens  of  a  healthy 
1  On  the  Bill  to  incorporate  the  Texas  Pacific  Railroad. 


THE   RAILWAY  POWER.  457 

reaction  in  favor  of  the  rights  of  the  people  and  against  the  fur- 
ther squandering  of  their  great  domain,  may  he  added  numerous 
resolves  and  instructions  of  State  Legislatures,  and  of  the  people 
of  all  parties  in  their  conventions  within  the  past  year. 

But  these  signs  of  the  times,  Mr.  Speaker,  have  not  been  un- 
mistakable.    The  railway  power  has  had  no  dream  of  surrender, 
and  has  been  more  tireless  and  sleepless  than  ever  before  in  the 
prosecution  of  its  purposes.     This  was  fully  made  manifest  a  week 
or  two  ago,  on  the  motion  of  the  gentleman  from  New  York  [Mr. 
Wheeler],  to  refer  this  South  Pacific  Bill  to  the  Committee  on 
the  Pacific  Railroad,  with  leave  to  report  at  any  time.    This  mo- 
tion was  overwhelmingly  carried ;  thus  showing  how  completely 
the  railway  interest  in  the  House  had  been  organized,  and  how  per- 
fectly it  held  this  body  in  its  power.     No  such  favor  had  been  ac- 
corded to  any  proposition  during  this  session  affecting  the  public 
lands.     Under  the  leave  thus  given  the  bill  is  reported  back  in  an 
amended  form,  but  without  any  restrictions  whatever  guarding  the 
rights    of  settlers.     Some    eighteen    million   acres    of  the    public 
domain  are  handed  over  by  it  to  one  great  corporation,  in  utter 
disregard  of  the  policy  so  earnestly  urged  by  the  President,  in  con- 
tempt of  the  people's  wishes  as  expressed  in  such  manifold  forms, 
and,  as  I  have  shown,  in    mockery  of  the  record  of  this  House 
made  at  the  last  session  without  division,  and  made  repeatedly  for 
years  past,  in  favor  of  guarding  these  grants  in  the  interest  of  the 
landless  poor.     What  is  the  result?     The  Chairman  of  the  Pacific 
Railroad  Committee,  in  reporting  his  amended  bill,  moves  the  pre- 
vious question,  thus  cutting  off  all  debate,  and  all    amendments 
save  as  permitted  by  himself.     Knowing  that  a  South  Pacific  road 
ought  to  be  built,  under  a  properly  guarded  bill,  knowing  how 
popular  is  the  idea  of  its  necessity,  and  holding  the  power  to  com- 
pel members  to  vote  against  the  bill,  or  else  to  vote  for  it  with  all 
its  imperfections,  he  demands  a  vote  at  once.     What  does  he  care 
for  the  rights  of  settlers  ?   What  did  he  care  a  year  ago,  when  the 
Northern  Pacific  Bill  was  carried  in  the  same  way,"  surrendering  to 
one  corporation  fifty-eight  million  acres  of  the  people's  patrimony  ? 
What  did  he  care  if  this  South  Pacific  Bill  allowed  the  corporation, 
along  a  portion  of  its  line,  to  go  any  distance  from  the  road  on  one 
side  of  it  in  grasping  the  public  domain,  because  there  was  a  defi- 
ciency on  the  other  ? 

•The  chairman  of  the  committee  represented  the  spirit  and  tac- 
tics of  the  peculiar  institution  known  as  the  railway,  and  was  the 
chosen  man  to  do  its  work  ;  and  I  award  him  the  credit  of  doing  it 


458  THE   RAILWAY  POWER. 

faithfully  and  courageously.  I  asked  him  to  allow  me  to  offer  an 
amendment,  wishing  to  make  the  bill  conform  to  the  policy  I  have 
indicated.  He  refused  me  the  privilege.  I  asked  him  to  allow 
the  amendment  to  be  read,  so  that  the  House  might  know  what  I 
proposed.  This  also  he  declined.  I  then  asked  him  to  allow  me 
only  three  minutes  of  his  hour  to  debate  the  proposition,  but  this 
also  was  denied,  while  awarding  the  floor  to  sundry  others  whom 
he  probably  regarded  as  less  obnoxious  to  his  purposes.  But  I  still 
did  not  despair.  The  relations  existing  between  the  distinguished 
chairman  and  myself  are  most  friendly.  I  could  not  believe  his 
obligations  to  this  company  would  compel  him  to  cast  me  off  en- 
tirely. He  knew  that  I  had  been  giving  some  attention  to  our 
land  policy  for  twenty  odd  years  past.  He  knew  that  for  ten  years 
I  have  been  an  active  member  of  a  committee  of  this  House  con- 
siderably older  than  that  on  the  Pacific  Railroad,  and  having  con- 
current jurisdiction  with  it  on  the  land  question.  I  hoped,  there- 
fore, he  would  not  refuse  all  my  petitions,  and  I  begged  of  him 
now  only  the  privilege  of  asking  him  a  single  question.  But  this, 
too,  was  denied.  The  distinguished  chairman  of  the  committee 
could  not  spare  the  time  ;  and  yet  he  promptly  awarded  the  floor  to 
the  gentleman  from  Ohio  [Mr.  Garfield]  to  ask  three  questions, 
each  preceded  by  a  preface,  and  so  plainly  foreshadowing  the  ready 
answers  which  were  given  as  to  excite  the  laughter  of  the  House, 
while  not  one  of  them  touched  the  vital  defects  of  the  bill.  The 
previous  question  was  seconded,  and  the  perfectly  disciplined  forces 
in  support  of  the  bill  passed  it,  by  —  yeas  135,  nays  70. 

Mr.  Speaker,  in  thus  referring  to  these  suggestive  and  pregnant 
facts,  I  beg  not  to  be  misunderstood.  As  I  have  already  said,  this 
South  Pacific  road  should  be  built.  From  the  first  I  have  looked 
upon  the  enterprise  with  favor,  and  have  earnestly  hoped  that  a 
bill  providing  for  it  might  be  so  well  considered  and  so  carefully 
framed  as  to  command  the  support  of  those  who  regard  the  settle- 
ment and  improvement  of  the  public  lands  as  not  less  important 
than  commercial  facilities.  Nor  do  I  cherish  any  hostility  to  rail- 
roads generally.  Both  by  speech  and  by  vote  have  I  borne  my 
testimony  to  the  contrary,  during  my  service  in  this  body.  It  has 
been  well  said  that  in  this  country  railways  create  the  towns 
which  they  connect,  and  carry  civilization  and  all  the  appliances 
of  civilized  life  with  them.  Undoubtedly  they  help  develop  the 
country  ;  but  the  development  theory  may  be  carried  too  far, 
and  too  fast.  It  is  one  thing  to  establish  great  lines  of  intercom- 
munication, foster  great  commercial  enterprises,  amass  great  wealth 


THE   RAILWAY   POWER.  459 

in  the  hands  of  the  few,  and  show  the  world  the  spectacle  of  a  mag- 
nificent government  founded  on  the  aristocracy  of  wealth.  It  is 
quite  another  thing,  while  looking  to  the  healthy  development  of 
our  commerce  and  the  activity  of  capital,  to  so  shape  the  adminis- 
tration of  affairs  as  to  preserve  in  their  full  vigor  the  principles  of 
democratic  government  and  the  republican  virtue  of  the  people. 

A  thoughtful  article  in  the  last  number  of  the  "  Westminster  Re- 
view," on  the  future  of  the  railway  in  the  United  States,  asserts 
that  we  "  are  rapidly  entering  a  new  feudal  age,  in  which  industry 
pays  its  tribute  to  commerce,  as  in.former  times  it  did  to  the  sword. 
The  despotism  of  this  feudalism  is  as  certain  as  was  the  other, 
though  the  means  for  enforcing  it  are  more  subtle  and  complex, 
partaking  in  this  respect  of  the  change  in  the  application  of  force 
which  has  marked  the  advance  of  industry  itself.  Industry  now 
does  not  depend  upon  mere  muscular  energy,  but  upon  steam,  nor 
does  despotism  depend  upon  the  sword  for  maintaining  its  rule,  but 
upon  legislation,  upon  financial  methods,  though  in  both  cases  the 
chief  hold  upon  the  people  is  founded  upon  the  possession  of  the 
roads."  The  writer  proceeds  to  illustrate  his  meaning  by  refer- 
ring to  the  power  of  the  old  feudal  barons  over  the  roads  passing 
through  their  territory,  in  virtue  of  which  they  levied  such  tribute 
as  they  saw  fit  upon  those  who  passed  over  them  ;  and  he  men- 
tions three  of  the  States  of  our  Union  which  are  as  completely  un- 
der the  control  of  their  railways,  in  their  political,  financial,  and 
commercial  interests,  as  ever  the  people  in  feudal  times  were  con- 
trolled by  the  baron  in  his  castle. 

Referring  to  one  of  the  modern  methods  adopted  by  railway 
corporations  for  increasing  the  power  of  capital  over  industry,  com- 
monly known  as  "  watering  their  stock,"  he  compares  it  to  the 
kindred  policy  of  the  feudal  barons  in  debasing  the  coinage  which 
they  forced  upon  their  unwilling  subjects.  He  declares,  what  no 
one  will  dispute,  that  the  railways  of  the  United  States,  as  against 
the  public,  invariably  act  in  harmony  ;  and  he  adds,  that  "  when  it 
is  remembered  that  this  combination  represents  an  aggregate  of 
capital  estimated  at  $2,000,000,000  ;  that  it  employs  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  persons  who  are  dependent  upon  it  for  support ;  that 
it  is  spread  like  a  net-work  over  the  entire  country  ;  that  the  in- 
dustry of  millions  is  dependent  upon  it ;  that  its  managers  are 
active,  devoted,  and  skillful  men,  who,  being  peculiarly  subject  to 
the  commercial  spirit  which  values  only  success  obtained  by  any 
means,  are  peculiarly  tempted  to  be  unscrupulous  concerning  the 
methods  they  may  employ  to  gain  their  ends,  it  becomes  a  serious 


460  THE   RAILWAY   POWER. 

question  what  shall  be  the  result.  Is  there  room  in  a  democratic 
country  for  such  a  combined  monopoly  ?  To  the  student  of  social 
problems  there  is  no  question  more  important  than  this :  Shall  the 
world's  progress  toward  the  amplest  conditions  for  the  freest  indi- 
vidual development  in  civilized  society  be  checked  and  balked  by 
obstacles  of  its  own  creation  ?  Shall  the  latter  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  behold  such  a  desperate  struggle  for  the  destruction 
of  commercial  feudalism  in  the  United  States  as  Europe  witnessed 
during  the  closing  years  of  the  eighteenth,  in  overthrowing  the 
feudalism  established  by  the  sword  ? "  Sir,  I  commend  these 
questions  to  the  most  earnest  consideration  of  this  House,  and  of 
the  whole  country.  I  cannot  hope,  in  the  light  of  what  I  have 
seen  here,  that  they  will  arrest  the  attention  of  the  gentleman  from 
New  York  [Mr.  Wheeler],  or  even  the  gentleman  from  Ohio 
[Mr.  Garfield],  whose  brief  dialogue  with  the  Chairman  of  the 
Pacific  Railroad  Committee  ended  in  his  happy  reconciliation  to 
the  South  Pacific  Bill.  But  they  cannot  fail  to  be  pondered  by 
those  who  prize  the  equal  rights  of  the  people  and  the  broad  inter- 
ests of  the  whole  country,  untrammeled  by  special  influences. 

The  question  presented  by  the  railway  power  of  the  United 
States  is  the  question  of  commercial  feudalism.  It  is  the  question 
of  democracy  on  the  one  hand,  and  aristocracy  on  the  other,  meet- 
ing in  deadly  conflict  for  the  mastery.  It  is  the  question  whether 
we  shall  have  a  government  resting  upon  the  policy  of  small 
farms,  compact  communities,  free  schools,  and  equality  of  rights, 
or  a  government  owned  and  dominated  by  great  corporations 
which  never  die,  which  band  themselves  together  as  a  unit  against 
the  rights  of  the  people,  and  will  accept  nothing  short  of  imperial 
power  over  Congress,  State  Legislatures,  and  the  courts.  The 
railway,  as  one  of  the  great  forces  of  American  politics,  is  new  ; 
but  in  this  age  of  marvelous  activities  and  commercial  greed  it 
already  represents  a  larger  moneyed  interest  than  that  through 
which  three  hundred  thousand  slaveholders  so  long  and  so  abso- 
lutely governed  the  country.  "  It  took  generations  to  limit  the 
baron's  prerogative  by  law,  but  in  less  than  twenty  years  the  law 
has  been  made  the  servant  to  do  the  bidding  of  the  railway." 

Sir,  I  ask  gentlemen  to  take  these  startling  facts  home  to  them- 
selves, and  lay  them  to  heart  in  season.  I  ask  them  to  consider 
whether  our  hot-bed  policy  of  building  up  towns  and  great  cities, 
amassing  vast  private  fortunes,  and  fostering  luxurious  and  extrav- 
agant living,  is  not  eating  out  the  virtue  of  the  people,  and  sapping 
the  very  life  of  our  institutions  ?     Democracy  can  only  grow  and 


THE   RAILWAY   POWER.  461 

thrive  in  the  sun  and  air  of  equal  laws  and  equal  opportunities. 
It  gathers  its  vitality  from  the  conditions  which  surround  it.  It 
must  breathe  the  atmosphei'e  of  the  whole  people,  and  renew  its 
life  in  the  fertilizing  dews  of  their  common  humanity.  It  needs  to 
be  cherished  and  strengthened  by  ceaseless  discipline  and  care;  like 
the  life  of  the  body,  and  must  wither  and  die  under  the  shadow 
of  aristocracy  and  privilege  in  whatever  form. 

In  theory  ours  is  a  government  of  the  people  ;  but  in  practice 
it  is  rapidly  degenerating  into  an  oligarchy  of  grasping  capitalists, 
wielding  their  power  through  our  constantly  multiplying  corpora- 
tions. Since  the  formation  of  the  Government  we  have  sold  in  all 
only  one  hundred  and  sixty  million  acres  of  the  public  domain,  a 
large  proportion  of  which  was  bought  by  non-resident  owners  for 
merely  speculative  purposes,  and  is  to-day  held  back  from  settle- 
ment by  our  homeless  people  ;  but  we  have  allowed  two  hundred 
million  acres  to  fall  into  the  remorseless  grasp  of  corporations, 
whose  feudalization  of  land  and  labor  I  have  indicated,  while  bills 
are  now  on  the  Speaker's  table  calling  for  the  additional  quantity 
of  at  least  one  hundred  million  acres.  Can  any  thinking  man  face 
these  facts  and  feel  that  the  Republic  is  safe  ? 

Can  a  government  be  called  free  whose  citizens  are  made  land- 
less by  its  systematic  policy?  Can  a  republic,  still  in  the  day  of  its 
youth,  be  honestly  lauded,  in  which  the  relative  number  of  its  land 
owners  is  constantly  decreasing,  while  the  obstacles  to  the  acquisi- 
tion of  homes  are  constantly  multiplied  ?  Let  it  be  remembered 
also  that  while  these  millions  of  acres  are  being  surrendered  to  cor- 
porate wealth,  and  still  other  millions  are  passing  into  the  hands  of 
monopolists  under  the  name  of  military  bounties,  college  scrip, 
swamp  land  grants,  and  Indian  treaties,  Congress,  as  if  the  absolute 
slave  of  these  monopolies,  persistently  refuses  to  legislate  for  the 
workingman  and  pioneer.  A  bill  to  prevent  the  further  sale  of 
the  whole  of  our  remaining  public  domain  which  is  fit  for  tillage, 
except  to  actual  settlers  under  the  preemption  and  homestead 
laws,  would  prove  a  more  beneficent  and  far-reaching-measure 
than  even  the  Homestead  Law  itself.  It  would  simply  carry  out 
the  avowed  policy  of  the  administration,  and  make  it  impregnable. 
It  would  intrench  it  in  the  hearts  and  homes  of  the  people,  and  in- 
sure the  Republican  party  a  new  lease  of  its  life.  It  would,  I  am 
sure,  be  welcomed  by  ninety-nine  hundredths  of  the  people  of  the 
United  States,  and  condemned  by  those  only  who  believe  in  the 
gospel  of  plunder  and  spoliation.  I  challenge  any  man,  of  any 
party,  to  give  me  a  single   reason  why  Congress  should   not  pass 


462  THE  RAILWAY  POWER. 

such  an  act  at  once.  I  challenge  any  man  to  account  for  the 
repeated  votes  in  this  body  against  this  proposition,  without  refer- 
ence to  the  corporate  and  special  interests  to  which  I  have  referred, 
and  whose  will  has  uniformly  taken  the  shape  of  law.  For  years 
have  I  striven  for  it  in  this  House,  and  with  increasing  earnestness, 
as  I  have  seen  the  public  domain  melting  away  under  the  shame- 
lessly prodigal  policy  of  the  government.  The  measure  was  voted 
down  at  the  last  session  on  the  yeas  and  nays  by  a  large  majority, 
as  it  had  been  before,  and  I  fear  I  shall  not  be  able  to  try  the 
question  again  at  this  session.  We  carried  it  as  a  measure  applica- 
ble to  a  few  States  and  Territories  in  July  last,  at  the  instance  of 
their  representatives,  but  our  bill  sleeps  in  the  Senate  Committee 
on  Public  Lands,  and  will  know  no  waking,  because  it  would  inau- 
gurate a  policy  threatening  the  profits  which  organized  capital  and 
financial  rapacity  hope  to  realize  through  still  further  raids  upon 
the  public  lands.  Let  the  people  note  the  fact,  and  let  their  watch- 
word henceforward  be,  the  emancipation  of  the  public  domain,  and 
the  emancipation  of  themselves  from  their  cruel  and  unnatural 
bondage  to  corporations  and  associated  wealth. 


REVIEW  OF  CONGRESSIONAL  POLITICS. 

CLOSING  REMARKS  AT  DUBLIN,  OCTOBER  25,  1808. 

[This  brief  political  autobiography  fitly  enough  followed  the  Congressional  canvass 
of  this  year.  If  its  language,  in  some  instances,  should  seem  severe,  the  extraor 
dinary  character  of  the  opposition  which  provoked  it  ought  to  be  considered.  In 
each  successive  contest,  the  warfare  against  Mr.  Julian  had  increased  in  bitterness 
as  it  declined  inpower ;  and  when,  all  other  methods  having  failed  hopelessly,  the 
attempt  was  made  to  get  rid  of  him  by  re-districting  the  State  so  asto  deprive  him 
of  the  great  body  of  his  friends,  and  he  was  about  to  succeed  in  the  new  district, 
the  most  shameless  example  of  organized  ballot-stuffing  by  pretended  Republicans 
which  followed,  and  has  since  been  judicially  proved,  furnished  some  excuse  for  the 
use  of  expressive  words.] 

My  Friends,  —  Allow  me  now  to  dismiss  the  subject  of  our  gen- 
eral politics,  and  beg  your  indulgence  in  some  local  and  personal 
references  which  seem  naturally  to  be  suggested  by  the  Congres- 
sional canvass  just  closed.  My  political  career  among  you  has 
been  a  long  one,  and,  in  some  respects,  quite  peculiar  in  its  char- 
acter ;  and  your  intimate  connection  with  it  must  invest  the  sub- 
ject with  an  interest  in  some  considerable  degree  common  to  you 
and  to  me.  In  what  I  shall  say,  I  must  disregard  the  injunction 
to  "  Let  by-gones  be  by-gones,"  because  I  do  not  think  it  applica- 
ble to  the  case  in  hand. 

My  first  connection  with  the  general  politics  of  the  Burnt  Dis- 
trict was  in  1848.  Up  to  that  time  I  was  a  member  of  the  Whig 
party,  but  the  nomination  of  a  large  Louisiana  slaveholder  for  the 
Presidency  brought  me  to  a  dead  halt.  I  could  not  support  him 
without  doing  violence  to  the  most  decided  and  deep-rooted  con- 
victions of  duty,  earnestly  as  I  desired  to  live  in  peace  and  unity 
with  my  old  party  friends.  Very  naturally,  therefore,  I  became 
identified  with  the  Free  Soil  organization,  which  was  then  spring- 
ing into  life  in  Wayne  County,  and  which  sent  me  as  a  delegate 
to  the  Buffalo  Convention.  Subsequently  I  was  made  an  Elector 
for  the  district,  and  as  such  I  made  by  far  the  most  vigorous  can- 
vass of  my  life,  encountering,  at  every  stage  of  it,  an  amount  of 
partisan  rancor  and  personal  abuse  which  have  seldom,  if  ever, 
fallen  to  the  lot  of  any  politician.  I  never,  for  a  single  moment, 
doubted  that  I  was  in  the  right ;  and,  having  a  good  constitution 


464  EEVIEW   OF   CONGRESSIONAL   POLITICS. 

and  an  excellent  pair  of  lungs,  I  made  the  hills  vocal  with  my 
Free  Soil  speeches,  speaking  two  to  three  times  per  day,  and 
"  fought  it  out  on  that  line  "  to  the  end.  My  opponents  used 
to  say  that  my  audiences  consisted  of  "eleven  men,  three  boys, 
two  women,  and  a  negro,"  and  there  was  sometimes  more  truth 
than  poetry  in  this  inventory ;  but  I  despised  not  the  day  of  small 
things.  Our  independent  movement  did  not  carry  the  electoral 
vote  of  a  single  State,  and  our  standard-bearer  himself  was  un- 
worthy the  support  of  honest  men,  as  subsequent  events  have  more 
than  proved ;  but  this  organized  stand  for  the  right,  and  protest 
against  the  wrong,  produced  some  very  remarkable  results.  It 
saved  Oregon  from  slavery.  It  gave  cheap  postage  to  the  people. 
It  launched  the  policy  of  free  homes  on  the  public  domain  which 
prevailed  years  afterwards  ;  and  as  "  the  child  is  father  to  the 
man,"  so  this  movement  was  the  progenitor,  certainly  the  fore- 
runner and  pathfinder,  of  the  mightier  one  which  rallied  its  hosts 
under  Fremont  in  1856,  elected  Lincoln  in  1860,  and  carried  the 
nation  safely  through  the  grandest  civil  conflict  that  ever  con- 
vulsed a  great  people. 

The  triumph  of  the  Whigs  in  this  contest,  paved  the  way  for 
their  utter  rout  and  ruin  in  1852,  but  they  were  temporarily 
elated,  and  showed  no  disposition  whatever  to  conciliate  and  win 
back  to  their  ranks  those  who  had^separated  from  the  party  and 
joined  the  Free  Soil  movement. 

The  supporters  of  this  movement  fully  reciprocated  the  un- 
friendly feeling ;  and  as  early  as  the  close  of  the  year  1818  they 
declared  their  continued  independence  by  nominating  me  for  Con- 
gress. The  Democrats,  smarting  under  their  defeat  on  the  decep- 
tive issue  of  the  Nicholson  Letter,  and  politically  powerless  jn  the 
District,  were  quite  ready  to  take  advantage  of  the  angry  feeling 
between  the  Whi^s  and  Free  Soilers  which  the  Presidential  can- 
vass  had  aroused.  Accordingly,  in  the  spring  of  1819,  they  were 
overtaken  by  an  apparent  spasm  of  anti-slavery  virtue,  which  led 
them  to  mount  the  Free  Soil  platform,  and  zealously  join  hands 
with  my  radical  friends  in  electing  me  to  Congress.  This  led  to 
the  oft-repeated  charge  of  a  bargain  between  them  and  me,  Avhich 
I  have  so  often  explained  to  you  as  simply  an  agreement  that  if 
they  would  stand  straight  up  and  down  on  my  platform,  and  pro- 
claim it  as  their  political  gospel,  I  would  allow  them  to  vote  for 
me  for  Congress,  Avhich  arrangement  was  carried  out  in  good  faith 
on  both  sides.  My  election  was  a  surprise  alike  to  all  parties,  and 
the  canvass  sowed  the  seeds  of  bitterness  which  still  rankles  in  the 


REVIEW    OF   CONGRESSIONAL   POLITICS.  465 

breasts  of  a  few  men  here  and  there  throughout  the  district ;  but  I 
believe  no  man,  of  any  party,  overcharged  me  with  unfaithfulness, 
in  the  Thirty-first  Congress,  to  the  principles  I  had  espoused  at 
home.  Braving  all  intimidation  and  danger,  I  stood  shoulder  to 
shoulder  with  Thaddeus  Stevens  and  the  handful  of  Radicals  in 
the  Congress  of  1849,  in  opposing  the  passage  of  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Law,  the  Texas  Boundary  Bill,  the  abandonment  of  the 
Wilmot  Proviso,  and  the  organization  of  the  House  in  the  interest 
of  slavery  ;  and  no  loyal  man  to-day  will  find  fault  with  my  action. 

In  1851,  in  pursuance  of  the  wishes  of  my  friends,  I  became  a 
candidate  for  reelection.  The  chances  of  success  Avere  exceed- 
ingly doubtful.  The  Compromise  Measures  had  silenced  anti- 
slavery  agitation.  Lower-law  sermons  and  Union-saving  meetings 
were  the  order  of  the  day  throughout  the  Free  States.  The  Whigs 
of  the  district  no  longer  even  pretended  to  stand  by  the  Wilmot 
Proviso,  while  the  Democrats  were  evidently  growing  uneasy,  and 
their  leading  men  were  openly  hostile  to  any  further  union  with 
"  abolitionism."  But  I  believe  it  safe  to  say,  that  if  I  had  been 
willing  to  trim  my  sails  to  meet  the  sickly  winds  of  compromise 
which  had  set  in  ;  if  I  had  been  willing  to  soften  down  and  shade 
off  the  right-angled  character  of  my  anti-slavery  principles,  I  might 
have  been  returned  to  Congress  then,  instead  of  biding  my  time 
through  a  probation  of  nearly  ten  years.  But  I  would  not  flinch  ; 
and  when  I  tasted  political  death,  I  had  the  consolation  of  knowing 
that  I  went  down  with  my  colors  flying. 

In  the  following  year  a  higher  honor  than  that  of  a  seat  in 
Congress  was  conferred  on  me,  in  my  nomination  for  the  Vice- 
Presidency,  on  the  ticket  with  John  P.  Hale.  In  1853  I  made 
my  annual  canvass  of  the  district,  still  endeavoring  to  indoctrinate 
the  minds  of  the  people  with  my  own  views.  In  1854,  when 
"  popular  sovereignty  "  sprouted  out  of  the  grave  of  the  Wilmot 
Proviso,  my  restoration  to  greater  political  activity  and  to  popular 
favor  seemed  natural  and  easy ;  but  a  new  power  in  our  politics, 
called  Know  Nothingism,  made  its  apparition,  and  completely 
balked  any  such  project.  If  I  had  so  far  played  the  mere  poli- 
tician as  to  join  the  lodges  of  this  new  order,  at  an  early  day,  my 
success  could  scarcely  have  been  doubtful ;  but  I  fought  it,  with 
all  my  might,  till  it  disappeared  from  our  politics.  The  odds 
against  me  for  a  time  were  overwhelming.  Nearly  all  my  old 
radical  friends  joined  the  order.  The  old  Whigs  were  in  it  al- 
most to  a  man,  and  a  very  large  per  cent,  of  the  Democrats  ;  and 
at  my  worst  estate,  I  believe  I  had  less  than  twelve  political  friends, 

30 


466  REVIEW    OF    CONGRESSIONAL   POLITICS. 

all  told,  in  the  wide  world.  The  situation  was  highly  encouraging 
to  my  old  foes,  and  in  the  glad  smile  which  lighted  up  their  faces  I 
coivld  see  plainly  inscribed:  "  Now,  at  last,  we  have  the  pestilent 
agitator  fairly  buried,  and  the  slab  of  eternal  silence  shall  be  laid 
upon  his  political  grave."  But  believing  then,  as  I  do  to-day,  in 
the  almightiness  of  truth  and  the  profitableness  of  duty,  I  thought 
there  would  be  a  resurrection  ;  and  the  only  harm  I  wish  my  old 
opponents  is  that  they  may  find  time  to  read  my  carefully  argued 
speech,  published  in  the  "  National  Era,"  and  "  Facts  for  the  Peo- 
ple," in  1855,  and  judge  me  by  my  own  words,  and  in  the  light  of 
present  events.  I  need  scarcely  add,  that  our  National  Republican 
Platform  of  this  year  emphatically  asserts  the  principles  for  which 
I  then  contended. 

In  1856  I  had  fairly  emerged  into  active  political  life  again.  It 
was  confessed,  even  by  my  enemies,  that  my  situation  was  not 
entirely  sepulchral.  I  was  graciously  permitted  to  occupy  the 
Republican  platform  at  mass  meetings,  as  you  will  remember,  and 
on  several  occasions,  in  the  presence  of  many  thousands  of  people, 
had  the  peculiar  honor  of  being  introduced  by  a  fellow  who  stood 
very  high  in  Wayne  County  (physically)  as  "  your  honored  repre- 
sentative in  Congress,  and  your  old  and  war-worn  veteran  in  the 
cause  of  liberty."  This  fellow,  since  become  infamous,  had  only 
a  few  days  before  declared  that  "  the  d — d  Abolitionists  must  be 
kicked  out  of  the  Republican  party."  In  1858  what  is  now  known 
as  Radicalism  had  grown  to  still  greater  prominence  and  influence, 
and  when  the  Republican  Congressional  Convention  for  this  dis- 
trict assembled  in  the  spring  of  that  year,  at  Cambridge  City,  the 
town  was  so  inundated  with  my  political  friends  that  the  friends  of 
other  aspirants  deemed  it  prudent  to  favor  a  postponement  of  the 
Convention  till  August,  which  was  hastily  agreed  to  on  all  hands. 
When  this  second  Convention  met  it  was  pretty  soon  discovered 
that  the  political  wires  had  been  so  artfully  and  unscrupulously 
manipulated  against  me  by  the  friends  of  all  the  other  aspirants,  that 
my  defeat  was  a  foregone  conclusion,  though  no  intelligent,  fair- 
minded  man  doubted  that  I  was  the  real  choice  of  the  people. 
This  Convention  was  an  important  event  in  my  career.  Here  were 
assembled  hundreds  of  men,  many  of  them  quite  influential,  whose 
minds  had  been  so  poisoned  against  me  that  they  had  never  before 
come  within  the  sound  of  my  voice.  Two  formidable  falsehoods, 
industriously  fulminated  against  me  by  my  leading  opponents,  had 
kept  me  down  during  the  previous  seven  or  eight  years ;  and  now 
I  was  to  have  the  opportunity  to  nail  them  effectually  to  the  coun- 


REVIEW   OF   CONGRESSIONAL   POLITICS.  467 

ter.  One  of  them  was  the  assertion  that  I  was  a  disorganize!", 
and  would  bolt  whenever  I  failed  in  a  nomination.  This  was  un- 
supported by  any  shadow  of  proof,  and  contradicted  by  my  uniform 
action  as  a  member  of  the  Republican  organization  ;  and  here, 
before  this  Convention  assembled  from  all  parts  of  the  district,  and 
in  the  presence  of  the  men  who  had  coined  the  charge,  I  branded 
it  as  false,  and  confirmed  my  denial  by  cordially  acquiescing  in 
the  nomination  of  Judge  Kilgore.  This  was  a  dagger  to  my 
opponents,  which  they  tried  in  vain  to  parry.  It  did  its  work 
thoroughly.  The  other  charge  was  that  I  was  in  favor  of  making 
an  irruption  into  the  South,  freeing  the  slaves  by  violence,  bring- 
ing them  into  the  North,  putting  down  the  wages  of  poor  laboring 
white  people,  marrying  the  negroes,  and  playing  Satan  generally 
on  a  very  large  scale  !  This  was  the  substance  of  the  charge,  and 
not  far  from  the  exact  language,  and  it  had  been  iterated  and  re- 
iterated so  zealously  for  years,  that  the  very  atmosphere  seemed 
to  be  loaded  down  with  it.  The  coiners  of  it  knew  it  to  be  false, 
but  they  seemed  to  believe  in  the  lines  of  the  poet, — 

"  How  full  of  weight,  how  strong,  how  bold ! 
The  big  round  lie,  with  manly  courage  told !  " 

This  charge  I  met  with  a  point-blank  denial ;  and  I  offered  a 
reward  of  one  thousand  dollars  to  any  man,  of  any  party,  who 
would  prove,  from  any  speech  I  had  ever  delivered,  by  any  letter 
I  had  ever  written,  or  by  any  word  I  had  ever  uttered  in  any 
conversation,  that  I  had  at  any  time  entertained  or  avowed  any 
such  sentiment.  This  was  another  dagger,  which  went  straight 
to  the  mark  ;  and,  for  the  first  time  in  my  life,  I  felt  that  I  was 
about  to  be  understood  by  the  people,  in  spite  of  the  men  who  had 
resolved,  at  all  hazards,  that  I  should  not  be.  This  Convention, 
therefore,  was  the  occasion  of  a  personal  and  political  triumph, 
while  General  Kilgore,  though  nominated,  felt  that  his  political  days 
were  ingloriously  numbered,  and  that  his  defeated  competitor  must 
be  "the  coming  man."  In  1860  I  was  overwhelmingly  nomi- 
nated and  elected,  and  it  seemed  to  be  done  as  a  matter  of  course. 
In  1862  the  fight  against  me  was  renewed  with  singular  bitter- 
ness ;  but  with  the  broadest  radicalism  on  my  banner,  demanding 
emancipation  and  the  arming  of  the  negroes  as  a  moral  not  less 
than  a  military  necessity,  and  openly  branding  General  McClellan 
as  a  rebel  sympathizer  and  a  military  failure,  I  was  sustained  in 
the  nomination  and  at  the  polls.  Proclaiming  a  radicalism  still 
more  thorough  in  1864,  I  was  again  nominated  and  elected,  after 


468  REVIEW    OF    CONGRESSIONAL  POLITICS. 

a  contest  which  had  no  parallel  in  the  past  in  the  bitterness  and 
malignity  with  which  I  was  assailed.  In  1866  all  the  elements  of 
hostility  were  marshaled  and  consolidated  against  me,  in  what  was 
evidently  intended  as  one  grand  and  final  assault ;  but  my  triumph 
in  the  nomination,  and  again  at  the  polls,  was  such,  that  I  believe 
all  hope  of  getting  me  out  of  Congress  fled,  save  in  such  a  recon- 
struction of  the  Fifth  District  as  would  deprive  me  of  the  great 
body  of  my  friends,  and  compel  me  to  look  for  help  to  new  coun- 
ties, in  which  I  was  comparatively  unknown. 

This,  my  friends,  brings  us  to  the  canvass  of  1868,  and  a  very 
remarkable  one  it  has  certainly  proved.  I  was  nominated  in 
April,  by  popular  vote,  and  with  such  singular  unanimity  that  the 
delegated  Convention  which  followed  made  the  final  nomination 
unanimous.  This,  considering  the  conflicts  of  the  past,  and  the 
peculiar  character  of  the  new  district,  was  in  the  highest  degree 
gratifying  to  my  friends.  It  seemed  to  be  a  most  unmistakable 
solution  of  our  Congressional  problem  for  the  present  year.  I 
believe  no  Republican  then  found  any  fault  with  my  public 
action,  or  has  since  done  so,  although  I  have  taken  no  merely 
passive  or  negative  part  in  the  practical  business  of  legislation 
during  the  past  seven  years.  I  have  been  an  earnest  and  active 
supporter  of  all  the  great  measures  growing  out  of  or  connected 
with  the  war,  such  as  the  confiscation  of  rebel  property,  the  arm- 
ing of  the  negroes,  the  destruction  of  slavery,  the  punishment  of 
rebel  leaders,  the  enfranchisement  of  the  freedmen,  and  the  recon- 
struction of  the  rebel  States.  I  have  also  had  the  honor  to  take  a 
decidedly  advanced  position  on  all  these  questions,  and  to  find  my- 
self fully  vindicated  by  time  ;  while  I  have  no  occasion  whatever 
to  put  out  of  sight  anything  that  I  have  done  or  uttered  as  your 
servant.  With  such  a  record  I  must,  of  course,  expect  the  en- 
venomed hostility  of  every  rebel,  and  every  sympathizer  with 
treason,  in  the  United  States.  I  have  had  it,  and  am  as  proud  of 
it  as  a  bride  of  her  marriage  ring.  I  have  denounced  and  branded 
them,  and  shall  continue  to  do  so  to  the  end ;  and  they  have  fought 
me  with  a  desperation  utterly  unprecedented,  and  which  defies  all 
definitions.  But  they  have  found  some  natural  allies  and  brothers 
beloved  in  a  few  pretended  Republicans,  who  joined  them  in  se- 
cret and  cowardly  conclave,  prepared  and  stealthily  put  in  circu- 
lation tickets  with  the  name  of  my  competitor  printed  in  the  place 
of  my  own,  and  so  closely  resembling  our  tickets  as  to  be  pecu- 
liarlv  calculated  to  induce  my  friends  to  vote  them ;  and  not 
content  with  this  act,  by  which  they  have  fairly  earned  the  honors 


REVIEW   OF' CONGRESSIONAL   POLITICS.  4G9 

of  the  Penitentiary,  they  coolly  planned  and  deliberately  executed 
a  conspiracy  to  stuff  the  ballot-box  of  the  south  poll  in  the  city 
of  Richmond  with  these  tickets  !  Of  course  these  factionists  knew 
that  the  issue  to  be  tried  in  these  fall  elections  is  the  most  solemn 
ever  submitted  to  the  American  people,  involving  all  the  questions 
of  the  war,  and  all  the  fruits  of  our  victory.  They  knew  that  in 
this  prolonged  battle  with  traitors,  no  power  but  that  of  Congress 
can  stand  as  a  breakwater  against  the  black  flood  of  treason  Avhich 
threatens  to  overwhelm  this  land.  They  knew,  and  frankly  con- 
fessed, that  they  could  make  no  objection  to  my  course  in  Congress 
during  the  years  of  trial  through  which  we  have  passed.  They 
knew  my  defeat  must  sadden  every  loyal  heart,  and  make  glad 
every  rebel  in  the  Union  ;  but  their  hoarded  malice  gave  them 
no  pause  in  their  treasonable  career,  and  has  left  them  no  reward 
but  the  disgrace  and  infamy  which  they  have  so  justly  earned. 
These  men,  after  doing  their  utmost  to  secure  their  wishes  in  the 
nomination  in  April,  should  have  abided  by  it.  If  any  pretended 
personal  grievances  could  have  justified  them  in  voting  against 
me,  they  should  quietly  have  erased  my  name  from  the  ticket,  leav- 
ing other  Republicans  free  to'conform  to  the  usages  of  the  party, 
and  aid  in  maintaining  its  unity ;  but  when  they  went  beyond  all 
this,  and  joined  hands  with  Copperheads  in  the  use  of  the  basest 
and  foulest  means  to  defeat  the  Republican  party,  they  lost  all 
right  to  be  recognized  either  as  Republicans  or  gentlemen.  They 
are  deserters  to  the  enemy,  and  should  be  dealt  with  accordingly. 
And  yet  these  interesting  and  precious  individuals,  as  if  deter- 
mined to  exalt  impudence  into  a  fine  art,  are  laboring  quite  in- 
dustriously to  propagate  the  idea  that  all  thought  of  making  another 
fight  in  my  behalf  must  now  be  abandoned  at  once,  since  the  con- 
test has  been  made  so  very  close  through  their  atrocious  plot  to 
crush  me !  What  a  beautiful  and  blessed  set  of  fellows  thus  to 
urge  their  own  unmatched  knavery  and  swindling  as  a  reason  for 
throwing  me  overboard,  and  selecting  some  man  who  can  com- 
mand their  distinguished  support !  Let  them  get  out  of  the  dis- 
honest graves  they  have  dug  for  themselves  before  they  trouble 
Republicans  with  their  advice.  The  future  will  provide  for  itself. 
These  men  have  been  laying  me  finally  on  the  shelf  for  a  number 
of  years,  and  perhaps  they  are  destined  to  continue  in  that  delight- 
ful occupation  some  time  longer.  When  they  urge  that  harmony 
requires  that  I  should  be  retired  from  the  political  field,  and  that 
such  conflicts  as  they  kindle  must  rend  us  into  fragments,  I  re- 
ply that  a  far  more  decent  method  of  establishing  harmony  would 


470  REVIEW   OF    CONGRESSIONAL   POLITICS. 

be  for  the  squad  of  raalignants  who  palm  off  spurious  tickets  and 
stuff  ballot-boxes  to  leave  our  organization  and  go  to  their  place. 
The  Republican  party  of  this  and  the  other  counties  of  the  district 
was  never  before  so  well  organized  and  so  completely  consolidated. 
In  the  counties  of  Wayne  and  Fayette,  notwithstanding  the 
spurious  ticket  fraud,  I  fell  below  the  State  ticket  far  less  than 
ever  before ;  while  in  Union,  Franklin,  Rush,  Hancock,  and  Shel- 
by, I  am  nearly  up  with  it.  Whoever  will  take  the  trouble  to 
look  at  the  votes  of  other  members  of  Congress  in  this  State,  and 
other  States,  as  compared  with  the  general  ticket,  will  find  very 
little  cause  to  cavil  at  the  difference  between  my  vote  and  that 
of  Governor  Baker.  No,  my  friends,  I  make  no  calculations  as 
to  the  future.  I  know  the  uncertainty  of  health,  and  of  life.  I 
know  that  we  have  men  among  us  whose  longing  for  my  ruin  is 
as  unslumbering  and  as  remorseless  as  ever  impelled  a  Ku  Klux 
Klan  to  sacrifice  a  hunted  victim.  I  know,  too,  how  weary  and  ex- 
hausting is  such  a  life  as  I  lead,  and  how  gladly  I  would  exchange 
it  for  retirement  and  rest.  But  I  have  accepted  all  dangers  and 
conflicts  in  the  past,  and  am  ready  to  brave  them  in  the  future, 
in  the  advocacy  of  what  I  believe  to  be  the  truth  ;  and  I  give  no 
countenance  whatever  to  the  suggestion  that  my  last  struggle  in 
this  Congressional  District  has  been  made.  When  I  shall  be 
defeated  in  an  honorable  warfare,  and  by  a  manly  opposition,  and 
not  by  political  Thugs  and  assassins  who  have  cheated  public  jus- 
tice out  of  her  dues  and  made  respectable  the  average  villains 
of  society,  I  trust  I  shall  be  ready  cheerfully  to  retire  from  the 
strife  of  politics. 

I  beg  your  pardon,  my  friends,  for  these  personal  references. 
They  concern  my  consistency  and  faithfulness  as  a  public  char- 
acter, and  to  this  extent  they  concern  you,  who  have  stood  by  me 
with  such  rare  consistency  for  successive  years.  I  can  say,  with 
truth,  that  I  have  endeavored,  sincerely,  to  serve  you,  and  thus 
to  earn  your  good  opinion  ;  and  now,  with  a  single  word  more,  I 
close. 

It  has  been  charged  that  I  have  been  too  ultra,  an  extreme 
man,  advancing  so  rapidly  that  instead  of  leading  the  people  for- 
ward I  only  blocked  up  their  way.  Judge  me  in  the  light  of 
to-day,  and  say  whether  Radicalism,  or  the  want  of  Radicalism, 
has  been  our  besetting  trouble  during  the  past  twenty-five  years. 
It  has  been  charged  that  I  am  ambitious.  If  so,  my  ambition  has 
been  to  serve  you  as  faithfully  as  I  could,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
weave  the  story  of  my  life  honorably  into  the  records  of  our  coun- 


REVIEW   OF    CONGRESSIONAL  POLITICS.  471 

try.  It  has  sometimes  been  said  that  I  am  selfish,  and  only 
willing  to  work  when  I  can  lead ;  but  I  point  you  to  my  record 
of  twenty  years,  during  which  I  have  given  the  strength  of  my 
manhood,  the  best  years  of  my  life,  to  the  holy  cause  of  Freedom, 
through  evil  report  and  through  good  report,  taking  no  thought 
for  the  morrow,  and  never  conferring  with  flesh  and  blood.  It 
has  likewise  often  been  said  that  I  am  "cold-blooded,"  "  unsympa- 
thizing,"  and  "  unsocial ;  "  but  this  charge,  however  honestly  be- 
lieved, is  refuted  by  my  whole  history  as  a  public  man.  I  have  en- 
countered, for  a  number  of  years  past,  an  amount  of  political  venom 
and  personal  vituperation  which  have  rarely  been  equaled  and 
never  exceeded  in  partisan  warfare  ;  and  I  confess  I  have  not 
loved  very  tenderly,  or  caressed  very  fondly,  the  political  blood- 
hounds that  have  been  leaping  at  my  throat,  or  the  small  dogs 
that  have  been  snapping  at  my  heels.  Probably  I  have  been  a 
little  "  unsympathizing  "  and  "unsocial"  toward  them,  but  in 
repeated  political  conflicts  I  have  successfully  wrestled  with  all 
the  leading  public  men  of  Eastern  Indiana,  either  singly  or  in 
combination  ;  and  I  was  able  to  do  this  because  in  every  battle 
I  fought  I  intrenched  myself  more  fully  than  ever  in  the  hearts 
of  the  people,  who  recognized  in  me  their  friend.  A  "  cold- 
blooded"  man  could  have  had  no  such  career,  because  the  instinct 
of  the  people  would  disown  and  spurn  him. 

It  is  said  that  I  am  "quarrelsome,"  and  some  of  our  newspapers 
have  paraded  the  names  of  sundry  distinguished  gentlemen  in  this 
section  of  our  State  with  whom,  it  is  said,  I  have  quarreled  dur- 
ing the  past  quarter  of  a  century.  But  may  I  not  suggest  that 
at  least  two  persons  are  required  to  carry  on  a  quarrel?  And 
may  I  not  further  venture  to  intimate  the  bare  possibility  that 
some  of  these  gentlemen  have  quarreled  with  me  ?  Is  there  any 
legal  or  moral  presumption  that  in  every  case  I  originated  these 
political  strifes,  which  were  never,  in  fact,  personal  quarrels  ? 
Standing  almost  alone,  as  I  have  so  often  done,  in  proclaiming 
unpalatable  doctrines,  is  it  not  somewhat  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  the  attacking  party  has  not  always  been  myself?  And  fur- 
thermore, I  beg  my  critics  to  remember,  that  if  I  did  "  quarrel," 
it  was  for  the  truth,  for  principles  now  in  the  ascendant,  and 
which  to-day  are  openly  espoused  by  the  very  men  who  "  quar- 
reled "  with  me  years  ago  for  advocating  them.  Am  I  not  entitled 
to  their  forgiveness?  Do  they  wish  to  continue  the  quarrel  after 
the  cause  of  quarrel  has  ceased? 

It   has  been  charged  that   I  am  "  an  uncompromising  hater," 


472         ^  ^JUtffEW   OF    CONGRESSIONAL   POLITICS. 

aricl  that  I  have  sought  "  to  crush  out  every  man  and  every  inter- 
est that  has  stood  in  my  way."  A  proposition  more  remote  from 
the  truth  could  scarcely  be  expressed  in  words.  What  are  the  facts  ? 
Early  in  life  I  embraced  some  very  decided  political  convictions.  I 
believed  in  them  absolutely,  and  therefore  I  clung  to  them  with 
a  tenacity  quite  surprising  to  politicians  gifted  with  "  the  faculty 
of  familiar  adaptation."  My  opinions  being  exceedingly  unpop- 
ular, I  must  either  yield  them,  or  encounter  great  odds,  and  the 
natural  tyranny  of  numbers.  I  did  not  surrender,  because  it  was 
morally  impossible,  and  therefore,  in  self-defense,  I  had  to  return 
blow  for  blow.  That  was  my  sin.  I  would  not  yield.  And  could 
I  be  expected  to  practice  the  gentle  graces  and  sweet  amenities  of 
social  life,  and  of  private  friendship,  in  confronting  the  intolerant 
crusade  of  a  powerful  opposition  ?  If  I  had  yielded  my  ground 
for  the  sake  of  peace,  I  might  have  had  peace,  and  with  it  the 
leisure  to  cultivate  the  spirit  of  conciliation  and  compliance,  and 
improve  my  social  habits,  which  it  seems  unfit  me  for  legislation. 
Perhaps  I  could  have  mastered  the  unworthy  arts  by  which  pub- 
lic men  very  often  win  favor  with  the  people,  if  I  could  only 
have  seen  fit  to  spurn  the  hard  and  rugged  path  I  have  pursued  ; 
nor  do  I  deny  that  conflicts  and  straggles  impress  the  character 
with  a  certain  sadness  and  sternness  which  somewhat  mar  the 
joy  and  beauty  of  life.  It  could  not  be  otherwise  ;  but  to  lose 
sight  of  those  virtues  of  courage,  steadfastness,  and  fidelity,  through 
which  a  man  is  able  to  defy  all  opposition  in  the  maintenance  of 
the  truth,  and  impute  his  constancy  to  a  disposition  to  "  crush  out  " 
his  opponents,  is  certainly  a  very  novel  and  peculiar  method  of 
dealing  with  human  nature. 

You,  my  friends,  have  understood  me,  and  sustained  me, 
through  all  these  years.  I  have  borrowed  from  you  your  strength, 
and  your  fidelity  to  freedom,  and  have  given  back  to  you  the 
dedicated  energy  and  zeal  of  one  who  thoroughly  believed  what 
he  taught,  and  resolved,  at  whatever  cost,  to  maintain  it  to  the 
end.  I  have  carried  the  same  spirit  into  the  new  Fourth  District, 
and  whatever  may  betide  my  future  political  fortunes,  I  shall  ever 
remember,  with  unfailing  satisfaction  and  pride,  the  tie  which  has 
so  long  bound  us  together,  cemented  by  time,  and  by  multiplied 
acts  of  mutual  service  and  friendship. 


& 


rti  jsnni    OM  06(50 


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No.  /7?A   Sect.     B-      Shelf, 
CONTENTS 


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Collateral  Lincoln  Library 


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